Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament by Michael Singer

Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament

Michael A. Singer

PART I: Conscious Awareness

Chapter 1. Awareness of Self

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.
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.

Who are you?

When you were ten years old and you looked in the mirror, did you see what you see now? No, but wasn’t it you looking—then and now? You’ve been in there the whole time, haven’t you? That’s the core, the essence, of everything we’re discussing. Who are you?
Who is in there looking out through those eyes and seeing what you’re seeing? Just like when you were shown the three photographs, you were not any of the photos—you were the one looking at them. Likewise, when you look out at the mirror, you are not what you see—you are the one who sees it.

Chapter 2. The Conscious Receiver

To look at this scientifically, you are not even looking at the outer objects. Right now, you are not actually looking out at what you see. What’s happening is that rays of light are bouncing off the molecules that make up the outer objects. These reflected rays are hitting your eyes’ photoreceptors and being transmitted back as messages through your nervous system. These messages are then rendered in your mind as an image of the external objects. You are actually seeing the objects inside, not outside.
The entire spiritual journey back to the seat of Self is not about finding yourself—it’s about realizing you are the Self.
Even in a Judeo-Christian sense, if somebody asks whether they have a soul, the correct answer is, “No, you don’t have a soul—you in there, the consciousness, are the soul.”
Thus, “Who are you?” becomes the quintessential question. You can’t free yourself until you understand who it is that’s bound. Likewise, you can’t understand acceptance until you understand who is resisting.
In The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, which is a very ancient yogic text, Patanjali discusses the topic of deep, dreamless sleep. He says that when you go to sleep and there are no dreams, it’s not that you are not conscious, it’s that you are conscious of nothing. If you spend time contemplating this, you’re going to find that you’re always conscious in there.

Chapter 3. Living Inside

We are back to the most basic truths of your life: you’re in there, you know that you’re in there, and you’ve been in there all along. This raises some interesting questions, such as, when the body dies, will you still be aware of being?

Eventually, however, there will be someone who provides that answer: You. You are guaranteed to personally find out someday whether you will be there after the body dies.
Why do people have so much trouble with death? It’s got to be one of the most exciting aspects of your life. It’s truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience! That is what’s waiting for you at the time of death. After that final moment, either you are going to be there or you are not. If you’re not there, don’t worry. No. You’re not there, so it’s not going to be a problem. The other alternative, however, is much more interesting—what if you are there? Then you’re going to find out what it’s like to explore a whole other universe where you don’t even have a body.
The reason some people have so much trouble with death is because they identify with their bodies. As if that’s not enough, they also identify with their cars and houses. People project their sense of self onto things that are not their self. When they do that, they feel afraid to lose those things. As you work your way through your inner growth, you won’t identify with these outer objects anymore. You’ll identify with the deeper sense of self within.

People are trying to use the outside to fix the inside—better to find out why it’s not nice inside to begin with.

Chapter 4. The Three-Ring Circus

What is it you experience that sometimes makes it nice inside, and sometimes makes it very difficult? There are only three things you experience in there, so let’s take a look at them.

Outside world is experienced through senses. Thoughts. Feelings or emotions.

First, you experience the outside world coming in through your senses. There’s a whole world out there, and what’s in front of you comes in through your eyes, ears, nose, and senses of taste and touch. When it comes in, it’s either a pleasant experience, an unpleasant experience, or a just-passing-through experience. Thus, the outside world is one of the things you deal with that has a profound effect on your inner state.
As overwhelming as the outside world can be, it’s not all you experience inside. You also have thoughts in there. You hear the thoughts saying, “I don’t know if I like this. I don’t even understand why she did it.” Or perhaps, “Wow! I’d like to have a car like that. I would go for long weekend rides in the country.” If you’re asked who is saying all this inside your head, you’ll probably say it’s you. But it is not you. Those are thoughts, and you are the one who is noticing the thoughts. Thoughts are just another thing you notice in there. You notice the world coming in from outside, and you notice the thoughts that are generated inside.
The third thing you experience is your feelings or emotions. There are feelings that come up suddenly, like fear.

Buddha said all of life is suffering. He wasn’t being negative. All of life is suffering. If you’re rich, poor, sick, healthy, young, or old—it doesn’t matter. There certainly are times when you’re not suffering, but the vast majority of what’s going on is you’re just trying to be okay. That’s what it boils down to. You will at some point realize that’s all you’ve done your entire life—try to be okay.

That’s why you cried when you were little; you weren’t okay in there. That’s why you wanted a certain toy; you thought it would make you okay. That’s why you wanted to marry this special person…

Chapter 5. Exploring the Nature of Things

What is your nature? What is it like to sit back and be conscious of being conscious? That is what all spirituality is about. When you are no longer distracted by any of the three great distractors, your consciousness will no longer be pulled into those objects. The focus of consciousness will very naturally remain in the source of consciousness.

PART II: The Outside World Chapter 6. The Moment in Front of You

All moments in the universe are simply moments in the universe; you are the one bringing your personal preferences into these impersonal moments and making them seem personal.

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.

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 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.
If it took 13.8 billion years for the moment in front of you to get there, and it took 13.8 billion years for you to end up in front of that moment, every moment is indeed a match made in heaven. Nobody else is standing there experiencing exactly what you’re experiencing. Truth is, no one ever did, and no one ever will. That exact moment will never be here again.
You live in a world where a seed falls on the ground, and it has a built-in chemist that knows how to break down the molecules of dirt and water, mix them with sunlight, and combine those substances into a cornstalk or a tree. You’re taught that this “intelligent chemist” is the complex DNA molecule. Where did this amazing molecular structure come from? All its elements were forged in the stars and then naturally got pulled together into the DNA structure by the four fundamental forces (gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces).
Human intelligence had nothing to do with the creation of DNA, yet DNA is responsible for all the plant and animal life on Earth. We live in a world that is so perfect it should constantly blow our minds. But we are so lost in making it all personal that we miss both the greatness of science and the greatness of God.
Mindfulness is a natural, effortless process once you let go of personal distractions. Instead of thinking that the moment in front of you has to be a certain way, you start thinking that it’s pretty awesome the way it is. In fact, it’s amazing that it even exists.
Can you appreciate this truth, and understand that you didn’t do anything to deserve the trees, the oceans, and the sky? You don’t even know where You came from. You’re just in there experiencing this amazing gift unfolding before you. This is spirituality—coming into harmony with reality, instead of your personal self.

PART III: The Mind Chapter 11. Empty Mind

Scientists are not able to read your thoughts, as hard as they have tried. But you can. There’s not a machine they’ve ever made, even for billions of dollars, that can read your thoughts. Yet you can, effortlessly. That’s a pretty amazing power you have.

Take a moment to digest that fact. Your consciousness has the ability to be aware of things that machines can’t detect: thoughts and emotions. These objects of consciousness surely exist, but not in what we define as the “physical” world.
- What if a scientist told you, “No, your thoughts are not there. I can’t detect them, so they don’t exist.” You’d walk away and laugh. You know your thoughts are there.

You, the same conscious awareness we’ve been discussing, have the ability to pay attention to, or not pay attention to, the thoughts being created at this higher vibration of energy. Through the years, people have called this higher range of vibrations the mental plane.
Mind is not the thoughts. Mind is the field of energy in which thoughts are capable of existing. Just as clouds are not the sky, but they exist in the sky and are formed out of the substance of the sky, so thoughts are not the mind, but they exist in the mind and are formed out of the substance of mind.
Buddhists talk about empty mind. In the purest sense, that is what we are referring to when we use the term “mind.” It is a field of energy with nothing in it. There are no thoughts. There’s just an absolutely still, formless field of energy we call “mind.”
Meditators who have gone deep understand this. You just rest in void, in empty mind. You’re there, but there are no thoughts. It’s just completely quiet, completely empty. It’s like a powerful computer that has no software on it. The computer has great potential, but it doesn’t do anything. That is what empty mind is.
You’re not out there in the world. You’re inside. You’re way back inside. Though the world is happening everywhere, you only experience the part that is picked up by your senses and rendered in your mind. Mind is no longer empty—it has formed its energy into the exact image of what is within the scope of your senses.
The outside is being reproduced in your mind, and you are looking at that mental image. It’s really not that different from when you are dreaming. In the dream state, images are being created in the mind, and you are looking at them. The waking state is the same, except that the mental images are being generated by the senses instead of by the mind itself.
In truth, consciousness is the most profound miracle. An essence that knows that it knows that it knows. Everything else is something you’re conscious of—the true magic is consciousness itself.
When consciousness is simply experiencing reality as imaged in the mind, that is what we call being in the present moment.
You are experiencing what you were meant to experience: the gift of the moment that’s being given to you. It comes in, and you learn from it simply because you experienced it. There are no distractions; there is just total oneness with the moment in front of you.
- Everyone has had some rare moments like this. Perhaps it took a beautiful sunset to bring you to such a state of one-pointed consciousness.

What does that mean, “It blew your mind”? It means there was nothing left in your mind but that image of the sunset. Not the mortgage, not the problem with the boyfriend, not the worries from the past. The only experience you were having was this beautiful sunset coming in through your eyes, rendering in your mind, and merging with your entire being. Your entire consciousness was centered and focused on the experience you were having, instead of being scattered all over the place. It was truly a spiritual experience.
That is what The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali describes as the experiencer and the experience becoming one. You have allowed a merger between subject and object. There’s nothing distracting your consciousness from what is happening right in front of you. This is the yogic state of dharana—one-pointed concentration.

Chapter 12. Birth of the Personal Mind

This learning through life is true spiritual growth. It is the evolution of the soul. Just like everything you learn makes you smarter, every experience you have makes you wiser. When the presence of a rattlesnake comes into your mind, true, it’s not a comfortable inner experience. It doesn’t feel the same as a butterfly, but it is just as rich. It is just as important. If you’re willing to be open at this level, you’re still in the idyllic garden. There are no problems; there are just learning experiences. No matter what happens, you are becoming greater.
Just like some colors are soothing and others are harsh. Colors aren’t bad or good; they are just different vibration rates of the electromagnetic spectrum. You can learn how to be comfortable with these different vibrations. A rattlesnake is not going to stay there rattling your whole life. It’s going to come, and it’s going to go—and its uncomfortable vibrations are going to go with it. Then something else will happen. You live in a happening place filled with growthful experiences. You are simply in there experiencing creation as it comes in and passes through you.

Chapter 13. Fall from the Garden

When the first plasma screens came out, they had “afterimages.” Manufacturers warned that if you paused an image for too long, it would actually burn a shadow of the image into the plasma screen. When the show continued, the old image would still be there. Would you enjoy watching TV like that? You’ve finished the news, but when you turn on a movie the afterimage of the newscaster is still superimposed on top of your movie. That’s exactly what is happening with the butterfly and the rattlesnake. You can no longer clearly see what is going on in front of you because you have these other images on the screen of your mind. You’ve messed up your screen. You didn’t mean to. It seemed innocent to push experiences aside when you didn’t find them pleasant. Where do you think they went when you resisted them? They got stored as lasting impressions in your mind.

Once you create preferences, they will dominate your entire experience of life. These impressions that stay stuck in the mind are called samskaras in yogic science.
Instead of paying attention, you’re getting so uptight about wanting butterflies, and not wanting rattlesnakes, that you’re losing your centered awareness. When the world around you comes in and hits, or activates, your stored patterns, you can no longer observe reality objectively. Your consciousness gets drawn into the activated samskaras, and everything becomes distorted. This is the foundation of the psyche, your personal self.
What is the psyche? It’s something you build inside of the mind that’s about you: “I’m the one who doesn’t like rattlesnakes. I’m the one who likes butterflies.” You just built a self-concept. Someone else doesn’t have that. They have a psyche built around thunderstorms, dogs that bite and kittens that snuggle.
Everyone has had different experiences, and therefore, everyone is building a different personal mind inside. No one is doing it purposely; it’s reactive. It happens quite naturally because you’re not ready to openly experience life.
The highest state is to be comfortable learning and growing from life’s experiences. But if you’re not comfortable with some experiences, you use your will to resist them. That merely means you’re not evolved enough in that area.
When events come in, they are meant to be experienced by you. If you have trouble experiencing them, that’s the whole purpose of learning to accept. What right do you have to either cling to or resist reality? You didn’t make reality, and you weren’t here for the billions of years that created it. We’re back to, “Do you like the fact that Saturn has rings?” Your answer was, “It’s none of my business.” That’s the correct response for every bit of reality that took billions of years to end up in front of you.
The real question is not whether you like things, it’s why are you not okay with them? The reason is actually quite simple: because you can’t digest them. It’s hard to let some experiences just pass through without residual disturbance. But you need to learn how to do it. You learned to play tennis. You learned all types of things.
You didn’t know how to do these things to start with. They were surely uncomfortable until you learned to be comfortable with them. The soul can learn. You in there, the consciousness, can learn to experience reality. In order to do so, you must not resist. Otherwise, you’re going to immediately push reality away. That’s what acceptance is: nonresistance.
It is having the commitment to fully allow reality to pass directly into the highest part of your being. In the end, all you are surrendering is your resistance to reality. You learn to let it come in, even if it is not comfortable as it pours into you.
The same thing is true with positive experiences, like the butterfly. Somebody you like comes up to you and says, “You know, I really like you. You’re very attractive to me, and I enjoy being with you.” That is such a nice experience that you immediately cling to the beautiful things they said. They go back to what they were doing, but you can’t. You can’t focus on your work because the impressions left in your mind keep distracting you.
This is the opposite of Be Here Now; you’re practicing Be There Then. You just had a beautiful experience, and you ruined it. You ruined it by holding on to it, like the butterfly. You ruined it by creating a preference about one of life’s experiences. Now every time the phone rings, and it’s not the person who said the nice things, you get disappointed. Be aware that you did this. Somebody said something nice to you, and you couldn’t handle it. You couldn’t just let it be a nice experience. Instead you clung to it in your mind and it actually messed you up.
You will come to see that these acts of clinging and resisting determine the quality of your life. These impressions distract your consciousness from the reality of the current moment. What is more, if you are constantly distracted by these samskaras in your mind, you’re never going to experience who you really are.

When you commit to spiritual growth, you work on letting go of the stored blockages from the past and not storing any more from the present. This does not mean the mind’s normal memory storage process does not take place. You are not willfully forgetting life’s experiences. You are simply not resisting or clinging to the experiences, and thus not storing them as samskaras. They remain harmless, objective memories.

Let’s take an example very close to home for some people. You have an ex-husband: “I don’t want to see him. I don’t want to talk about him ever again. I don’t even like it when someone says his name. It makes me uncomfortable, even years after the divorce!” This is not objective memory talking—it is definitely a samskara.
You say you divorced your ex-husband, but you really didn’t. He’s still inside bothering you. You don’t even want to go to a party if you think he might be there. You have kept these impressions blocked in your mind, and ultimately you have created an alternate universe in which you are still dealing with your ex. Normal memory is not like this; it is well behaved. Like a computer’s memory, it does not pop up by itself. It does not have blocked energies that need to be released. Normal memory is there when you need it—it does not haunt you throughout your life.
Fortunately, most things you encounter in life are neutral to you. They pass through unblocked and are available for recall when appropriate. You have driven by white lines on the road many times, but they don’t come back up by themselves at inopportune times. Neither do the cars, trees, buildings, and myriad other objects you encounter each day. They come in, and they pass through. But there are a few things that are harder to deal with inside, and therefore you resist them or you cling to them. This is how you fell out of the garden of reality.

Chapter 14. The Veil of the Psyche

The truth is the whole world is a giant Rorschach test. The world is a flow of atoms unfolding in front of you. It’s no more personal than the inkblots. But it’s hitting your samskaras, and that stimulates stored mental and emotional reactions.

Now, instead of experiencing what is passing by outside, you are experiencing the likes, dislikes, beliefs, and judgments stored inside. These impressions are so strong that you actually think they are what is really out there, just like the inkblots. The personal mind has taken over your entire life. You are no longer free to enjoy the experiences that are actually happening—you are forced to deal with what your mind says is happening.
That’s why life seems so scary and why it seems to always be hitting your weak spots. The truth is, life is not hitting your weak spots, you are projecting your weak spots onto life.
You held on to some positive things from the past. The problem is they’re not happening anymore, and that is disappointing. If you go back to the same place where you saw the butterfly, and it’s not there, it becomes a negative experience.

Understand, you have just made life a lose-lose situation. If anything reminds you of what bothered you before, you lose. If you are not getting to reexperience what you liked before, you lose. (fighting with reality)

This is in drastic contrast to what Zen calls beginner’s mind. If you are not expecting anything in particular from a situation, and then something special happens, it can touch you really deeply.
It could be a beautiful sunset, the first unexpected kiss, or some other welcome surprise. If it touches you so deeply because you have no samskaras in your mind about the event—you have beginner’s mind. Otherwise, you will be expecting something based on prior experiences, and that will interfere with the spontaneity of the event.

Chapter 15. The Brilliant Human Mind

You’re back in there, deep inside, and you have the use of a brilliant mind. That said, what is the average human doing with their mind? Einstein used his mind to ponder “thought experiments” about the behavior of light, gravity, and the physics of outer space (even though no human had ever been there!). Meanwhile, you keep your mind busy with relationships, what people think of you, and how to get what you want and avoid what you don’t want.

You may not have Einstein’s mind, but compared to any other living thing on Earth, your mind is brilliant. The question is not whether your mind is brilliant; the question is what are you doing with that brilliance?
You can think of this as layers of the mind.
- The first layer is where the rendering of the present external experience is taking place. We can call that the here-and-now layer.
- The next layer is the stored patterns from the past that you did not release when the external experience was over. We can call that the samskara layer. But there is yet another layer.
- This layer is what you are doing with your brilliant mind to try to solve the discomforts created by the samskaras. This is the personal-thoughts layer, and it is the one you identify with the most—you think this is who you are. The combination of these three layers is what we call the personal mind. Yours is completely unique to you and you alone.

The problem is, what we think will make us feel good or bad is simply the result of blocked mental patterns from the past. If we use our mind’s brilliance to develop thought patterns based on how everyone and everything needs to be for us to feel okay, we have limited our life to serving our samskaras. And our personal thoughts don’t stop here.

PART IV: Thoughts and Dreams Chapter 16. The Abstract Mind

Is it really intelligent to devote your life to fighting with life so it aligns with your past good and bad experiences? How can you enjoy life if you are always worrying and struggling to get it your way?

If they get what they want, they are relatively okay. If they don’t get what they want, they suffer to a greater or lesser extent. Fortunately, you do not have to live this way. There is a much higher way to live life.
To understand this transformation, let’s first take a look at how you even decided what you want and don’t want. If you pay attention, you will see that your past experiences determine your preferences. You didn’t just make it all up from scratch—your views, opinions, and preferences are formulated based on data from your past.
For example, let’s say you are totally secure in your love relationship until you hear that your friends had a breakup, and they are miserable. All of a sudden you start worrying about your own relationship. You were fine before you heard about your friends, but now you’re not. You stored the concept of a breakup inside your mind, even though it really had nothing to do with you. You took it personally.
Is it possible to process the information without it getting stuck in your mind? Of course it is. Your friends had a problem, and they shared it with you. It came into your mind, passed through your consciousness, and you experienced the feeling of compassion. The interaction actually made you a greater being. You were able to fully absorb the reality of life without it getting stuck in your mind. If you want to recall it later, you can willfully restore it from memory in all its glory. But it will not keep coming back up by itself. Since it did not get stuck in the conscious mind, or shoved into the subconscious, it will not adversely affect your life. It actually made you a better person because you were able to handle the experience.
On the other hand, if you were not able to process the experience without resisting it, it will stay stuck in the conscious mind and create havoc. If you really resist it, it will get shoved down into the subconscious where it will fester and spread its disturbance throughout the mind.
It’s easy to see why people don’t agree with each other. Nobody else has had the experiences that came in through your eyes. What you have inside your mind is completely different from what others have inside their minds.
You are holding all that personal stuff inside your mind—the good, the bad, and the ugly. The inevitable result is that if the moment in front of you happens to align well with your stored patterns, you feel great. You feel open, excited, and enthused. If it doesn’t align well with your stored patterns, you get upset. You immediately close, get defensive, and maybe even get depressed.

Now we’re back to the question we asked earlier, “What’s it like living in there?” Sometimes it’s nice; sometimes it’s not. Sometimes it’s heaven; sometimes it’s hell. This is why. It is not because God made it that way. You did this. You were given free will, and what you did with your free will was make a mess out of your mind. Instead of being in awe that the moment in front of you even exists, you fight with it to make it match what you want.

Chapter 17. Serve Mind or Fix It

All your preferences exist because you stored experiences from the past inside your personal mind. This makes it difficult to live in there, but instead of fixing it, you double down and try to satisfy your preferences. “I want to feel good, and the way to feel good is by getting the house I want.” The way to feel good is by owning the car I’ve always wanted.” These attempts to compensate for your blockages are at best short lived because you’re not actually getting rid of the blockages.
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.
The fact is we stored these samskaras inside. We shouldn’t have, but we did. Now instead of getting rid of them, we expect the world to adapt to them.
We’re brilliant at figuring out how to make someone become attracted to us, or to change things so they better fit our limitations. Almost everything we do is governed by this personal-thoughts layer of mind. It is the same analytical power of mind that Einstein used to see E = mc2, but you’re using it to figure out what to do if someone’s talking badly about you. This entire layer of mind intellectualizes and analyzes your stored patterns to try to figure out how the world needs to be so that when it comes in, it will feel good and never feel bad.
That is why you tend to have so much trouble making decisions. You’re trying to figure out how each choice will make you feel later. “Where do I want to live? Should I change jobs? I need to figure this out.” You’re trying to mentally conceptualize how the proposed action will match the patterns you’ve stored inside.
How about live in reality and enjoy the moments that are unfolding in front of you? That’s what else you can do.
Use your mind to be creative, inspiring, and do great things. 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.
The self-centered, analyzing layer of mind is the worst. It is the model you build about how everything and everybody needs to be for you to feel okay, including the weather tomorrow. “It better not rain tomorrow, I’m going camping.” Now you’re getting upset about the weather! You have no control over the weather, yet it’s bothering you.
The driver in front of you is going ten miles per hour below the speed limit. Let’s watch your mind: “This is ridiculous. I don’t have time for this. What’s wrong with them? They’re supposed to be in the slow lane.” Turns out the problem is not how the person in front of you is driving. The problem is what your mind is doing about how the person in front of you is driving.
Eventually you catch on that you’ve developed an entire intellectual model of how every single thing needs to be: how people should behave, how your spouse should be dressed when you’re going out, even how much traffic there should be. How many things do you do this about? Pretty much every single thing.
You honestly believe that what you made up is how it should be. The truth of the matter is, that’s absurd. There is no way what you made up in your head, based upon your very limited past experiences, has anything to do with what’s supposed to be happening in the real world.
A wise person realizes that the world is not going to unfold the way they want it to because it’s not supposed to. No two of us agree how it’s supposed to. No two of us agree how it’s supposed to unfold, yet there’s only one world out there.
The world in front of you has the power of reality behind it. It is unfolding in accordance to the influences that made it be the way it is, and there are billions of influences going back billions of years. In contrast, you’re just making up how it’s supposed to be based on the impressions you held inside from your past. When reality doesn’t happen the way you want, you say reality is wrong. “I don’t like that. It should not have happened.”

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 do is 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.
Buddha’s first noble truth: All of life is suffering. Now we get to the second noble truth: The cause of suffering is desire. In other words, the cause of suffering is preference, deciding how you want things to be and getting upset when they’re not that way. Not surprisingly, it turns out Buddha was right. Events don’t cause mental or emotional suffering—you cause yourself mental and emotional suffering about the events. If you are not doing that, things are the way they are. Always remember, it took 13.8 billion years of everything unfolding exactly as it did for the moment in front of you to be the way it is.
Experiences should not cause suffering. Experiences are not suffering. They are experiences. But if you decide how you want them to be, and they’re not that way, then you suffer. Suffering is caused by the contrast between what you mentally decided you wanted and the reality unfolding in front of you. To whatever degree they don’t match, you suffer.

Chapter 18. Willful and Automatic Thoughts

You’re in there, and you have the ability to create a thought. Right now say “Hello” inside your head. Say it over and over again. It’s doing it, isn’t it? If you had not purposely said that word, it would not have been in your mind, would it?

In general, there are two very distinct types of thoughts: willful and automatic.
You can willfully create thoughts in two different ways. You can create auditory thoughts through the voice inside your head talking to you, saying “Hello,” or you can create visualizations in your mind’s eye.
You’re not willfully making your mind create these thoughts. This is that voice inside your head talking on its own. If you doubt that this is happening by itself, try stopping it for any length of time. The mind’s stream of thoughts will return in no time.

Chapter 19. Dreams and the Subconscious

The common thread between your waking and dreaming states is that it’s the same consciousness that is aware of both. You who is watching the dream is the same you who watches your waking thoughts and experiences the outside world. This is why when you wake up, you can say, “What a dream I had.” How do you know? You know because you were there—the same you who is aware while you’re awake.

Chapter 20. Waking Dreams

The voice inside your head that talks all day is the exact same expressive power of mind that creates your dreams. It would not be incorrect to call that dialog in your head your waking dreams. Every personal thing that voice says is because of the samskaras you have stored inside. Your mind is trying to release those blockages during the day while you’re still awake.
For example, you see somebody running and that voice says inside, “I wonder what he did wrong? It’s like my brother when he ran away. What is this guy running away from?” The problem is that this current situation has nothing to do with your brother, and this person could be running for exercise. Your mind is using this opportunity to release energies that are pent up inside. That’s why so much of the mind’s dialog is negative.

Just look at the odds you’re up against. There are billions of things that can happen in life that don’t match your preferences, and there are only a few that do. Under these conditions, the probability that life is going to be a negative experience is extremely high. This is not because life is negative. It is because the only thing that isn’t negative to you is that which exactly matches your preferences.

It is so important to understand this. You have set up a system in which you can’t win. You have expanded what can bother you to include all experiences that remind you of what bothered you before. What is more, life almost never totally satisfies you because everything has to be exactly what you want—to a T. This shows you the power of past and present preferences—the more preferences you have, the less you will be okay.

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.

PART V: The Heart Chapter 21. Understanding Emotions

Emotions are very different from thoughts, but most people don’t bother to separate them. The combination of your thoughts and emotions makes up what can be called your psyche, or your personal self. The psyche is completely distinct from your physical body. The psyche is the nonphysical world going on inside you.

Emotions: They are actually vibrations. They don’t form specific objects like thoughts do. They’re more etheric. Emotions are more like clouds instead of defined objects. They come up and can be like waves flowing over you. They flush what we call your aura or energy body. Emotions are simply the sensation of experiencing a change in your energy. Like Obi-Wan in Star Wars put it, “I felt a great disturbance in the Force.”

You are always having inner feelings, but you don’t notice them until they change. Notice that you only talk about emotions when they go to the extremes.
You probably don’t notice it, but you have a normal state of emotional energy flowing through your heart all day. When it drops out, you notice the change.
As you get more and more in tune with your emotions, you will notice that, like thoughts, emotions are almost always there.
The goal of this journey we are taking together is not to change your thoughts or emotions, it is for you to stay seated in the seat of Self while accepting these different shifts that are taking place. From this vantage point, the emotions can change, you can notice them changing, but you don’t go anywhere. You remain the one who notices the emotions, hears the thoughts, and looks out through the eyes.
If you pay attention, you will notice emotions can be like the sensation of wind flowing over you. Wind can be very comfortable, like a gentle breeze. Or wind can be frightening,
It doesn’t take effort to notice them, but it can take effort to handle what you notice.
Emotions are very sensitive vibrations emanating from the heart, and as such they can shift very easily. The heart is much more sensitive than the mind, and we have much less control over it.
Without question, when your heart emanates a particular vibration of energy, your mind will start talking accordingly. Your heart is releasing energy of a given vibration rate, and that vibration rises into your mind automatically.

Chapter 22. Why the Heart Opens and Closes

If you want to know your heart, first and foremost understand that you are not your heart—you are the experiencer of your heart. You are the consciousness that is aware when emotions are taking place.

Once you have reached a deep level of inner clarity, you will notice that just because you are content with reality doesn’t mean you don’t interact with it. The world continues to appear before you, but there’s nothing personal about it anymore. It is just the part of creation passing before you at that moment. Reality doesn’t bother you because you don’t need anything from it. It simply exists and you simply exist—in perfect harmony. Every moment unfolding in front of you is there for you to serve. It can be as simple as appreciating it, or you may be able to raise the energy of the moment passing before you. A smile, a kind word, a helping hand—these are all ways of raising the energy as it passes by. Doing your job to the best of your ability, taking care of your family, serving your community—these simple acts are just as much service to the universe as anything else.
Imagine you’re taking a walk and there’s a piece of paper on the side of the road. You feel the disharmony, and you pick it up. It’s not a “have to” or a “supposed to”; you’re simply an artist making the world more beautiful.
You are simply a spontaneous being who is in harmony with life. You expect nothing back from your actions because they were not done for approval or recognition. You can’t help but share the beautiful energy going on inside of you with the moment in front of you.

The highest life you can live is when every single moment that passes 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.
You have to live a life that, if everyone lived it, there would be peace. If you can’t do that, you are part of the problem, not the solution.
The moment in front of you is talking to you. It doesn’t have to be in words. The piece of paper on the ground, the person who needs some help, whatever it is, your response becomes obvious. The deepest truth is that it doesn’t even matter what you do. What matters is where you’re coming from. What matters is your motive.
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 do 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. If somebody criticizes your actions, just apologize and let go. Always be willing to learn. If you come from the highest place you can, there’s no guilt, no shame. The fruits of the best you can do are a very holy thing. If something terrible comes back from the best you can do, own it. It’s yours. Let it teach you. Let it make you better, so you’ll do better next time. Please, don’t feel bad about it. Don’t judge anything.
To get closer to becoming one with flow, you must surrender your entire sense of separation. It’s not enough to experience the energy, you must release yourself into it. As you let go, the flow will pull you in. That’s where the great masters went.

In Sanskrit, the word yoga means “union.” Meher Baba said that when he first went into the highest state of enlightenment, it was like a drop of water fell into the ocean. Try to find that drop. You can’t—it merged with the ocean. Christ said, “I and my Father are one” (John 10:30).

When you cease to separate your sense of self from this flow of the energy, it starts to pull you into it, and you become one with it. Yogananda called it a river of joy flowing inside you. Your path is to find it, go there, get in, and drown.