I was inspired by a book called the untethered soul by Michael A. Singer and I want to share a chapter from his book, along with a few other thoughts mentioned throughout the book.
Michael Singer is a former software programmer a best- selling author and the founder of a meditation center. The untethered soul is about soaring beyond the boundaries of ourselves. The book inspires us both psychologically and intellectually to go beyond the boundaries that we create in our minds and learn how to process a deep inner surrender that ultimately leads us to freedom and inner liberation.
In chapter 13, he states that going beyond means going past where we are currently, in each moment, always moving past the limits of our own thinking and expanding to our full potential. When we constantly go beyond ourselves, there are no more limitations. There are no more boundaries. Limitations and boundaries only exist at the places where we stop going beyond. To go beyond, we must keep going past the limits that we put on ourselves and those around us.
Through our own patterns of judgments, fears, insecurities, hurts, beliefs and opinions, we place limits on ourselves and others and feel the need to label things as right, wrong, bad, unfair or good, to fit into our limited thinking. This mental model becomes our reality that we build inside ourselves. Also called the personality. We expend much thought and emotional energy struggling day and night to make the world fit into our model that we designed. We fight, defend, rationalize and get angry over simple little things because these things are disrupting our “mental model” of what we believe to be true or false.
When we are defending ourselves, we are really defending the walls we created within ourselves. There is nothing else to defend in there. There is just our awareness of being, and the limited house we built to live in. What we are defending is the house we built to protect ourselves from discomfort and fear. We have built a self- concept, our personality, or our personal reality, moved inside and now we defend that home with all we have. Even justifying our home and pointing fingers at others as to why we stay in our mental home, not ever recognizing that it is our choice to stay there.
The judgments, beliefs and opinions form the walls of our cage to which we live.
We are constantly trying to stay within the comfort zone of familiarity, struggling to keep people places and things in a manner that supports our mental model. If they start to go any other way, we get uncomfortable. The moment somebody starts behaving in a way that is outside our expectations, our mind begins its talking. Telling us to fix it.
Going beyond means going beyond the borders of the cage. Letting go of the effort to keep things within our defined limits.
We can choose to live one of two ways:
we can devote our life to staying in our comfort zone,
or we can work on our freedom.
In other words, we can devote our whole life to the process of making sure that everything fits into our limited model, or we can devote our life to freeing ourselves from the limits of our own model, evolving into the expanding being that we are meant to be.
Our comforts zones are familiar to us and beyond it, is the unknown. The mental cage is familiar and “safe”.
Our mental cage protects us from harm, or does it?
When we are in this mental cage, we spend an enormous amount of energy keeping the walls up to the cage, by defending all that is in it. Having to worry about what everybody is doing and saying, what we look like and what we are doing, saying, and wearing. It can be quite exhausting to our energy, and drain us of our life force energy.
When we have set limits on ourselves and others, or when something challenges these beliefs, we get frustrated or scared, feel hurt and threatened. We begin to feel the limits of the cage when someone or something gets near the walls of the cage, we have created with our belief’s judgments and opinions. Our psyche begins to resist. Our bars are the outer boundary of our comfort zone. The minute we come to the edge of the cage it lets us know it in no uncertain terms, by the feeling of fear and discomfort. If somethings approach our limits, we begin to feel uncomfortable and insecure, jealousy, fear, or self -consciousness. We pull back and like most people we stop trying.
These are the bars of the cage. As long as we remain inside of this cage, we cannot possibly know what is on the other side.
Going beyond means going beyond the borders of the cage.
There should be no cage.
The cage blocks our life force energy. Energy is unable to move freely. There is resistance and fear creating imbalance and ill-health.
Our soul should be free to expand everywhere, free to experience all of life. This can only happen when we are willing to face reality without mental boundaries.
Freedom begins when we decide that we will never stop trying.
To go beyond, no matter what it takes.
It is an infinite journey based upon going beyond ourselves every minute of every day for the rest of our life. If we are truly going beyond, we are always at our limits. We will never go back into the comfort zone.
A liberated being is an expanded spiritual being and feels as though they are always against that edge and they are constantly being pushed through it. When we feel these edges being approached, this may feel like tension or anxiousness, a rapid heart rate, the inability to stay centered or specific patterns of thoughts may arise.
Just relax and release.
Walk to the edge,
relax, and release some more,
and allow the energy of the situation to move through you,
by relaxing and releasing.
Be an observer versus a participator.
Relax and observe what is happening and release it.
That is all that it takes to go beyond.
Go beyond where you were a minute ago by handling what is happening now.
Imagine a place of comfort within that is so expanded that it can easily fit the entire day no matter what happens, the day unfolds and the mind does not say anything. Interacting with the day in a peaceful and fully inspired heart. If our edges happen to get hit, the mind does not complain, and if it does, we relax and release and it all just passes through. (We will talk about breathing tools in the future posts)
We begin to realize that we will always be fine.
Nothing can ever bother us except our own edges, and what we end up doing with them.
We will end up loving our edges because they point our way to freedom.
All we must do is constantly relax and have the courage to lean into them. Freedom sits on the other side of the veil.
That is what it means to go beyond.
True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not OK and needs protection. Our true greatness hides on the other side of that invisible cage that we created. Leaning into "our edges" means to become untethered from the bonds of the personal self and be set free to explore beyond.
“Well I know it wasn’t you that held me down,
heavens know that it wasn’t you that set me free, so often it happens, that we live our lives in chains, and we never even knew that we had the key”
-Already Gone, The Eagles-
"If you want permanent peace, permanent joy, and permanent happiness, you have to get through to the other side of the inner turmoil. You can experience a life in which waves of love can rush up inside of you anytime you want. It is the nature of your being. You simply have to go to the other side of the psyche. You do that by letting go to the tendency to cling. You do it by not using your mind to build false solidity. You just decide, once and for all to take the journey by constantly letting go." (Chapter 14)
Ruidoso New Mexico Jan 2020
Winter Park
A bit out of my comfort zone. Gary as cool as ever, taking video and laughing and there i am absolutely "freaking out"🤣😄So much fun and besides a small butt bruise, we did it over and over again.
We hope that each of you found this material as inspiring as we have. Have a beautiful day and thank you for spending time exploring with us.💖💫
Thank you.