Bryan McLean's Key Ideas from The Untethered Soul
by Michael A. Singer

The inner roommate constantly narrating your life, also known as your psyche, is not consciousness. Becoming aware of that voice and understanding that you can have control over that voice is what brings us to awareness. And consciousness is pure awareness. Awareness not only of the outer world, but of your thoughts, feelings and emotions as well. If you were sitting in a room filled with objects and one by one those objects disappeared and everything is now gone, you are the one noticing that everything is gone. That center is the true self that can set you free.

Energy is the basic building block of all matter. Everything from the movements we make to reading this message requires it. Just as everything that happens in the physical world requires it. At any moment you’re able to tap into that energy if you open yourself to it and allow it to flow through you. Most of us restrict that flow by blocking our hearts and minds based on our past experiences; I.e. We smell something we don’t like and we close off the experience of that moment. It’s that simple. If we learn to stay open that energy is allowed to flow through us and keep us in a higher state.

Two types of experiences can cause blockages in the heart,

1. Pushing it away because it bothers you.

2. Clinging to it because you don’t want it to go away.

Either way, you’re not allowing the energy to flow through and a blockage occurs. These are called Samskaras and will control your life if you let them. Every time a Samskara is triggered, it opens and releases the energy that is trapped, causing flashes of what you experienced, good or bad, when the original event took place. The way to rid yourself of this happening is to allow it to come to your consciousness, and then Let It Go!

Change is constant and we can look at it as a chance for personal growth or we can fear what that change will bring. Keeping that fear inside forces you to try and keep it protected from stimulation. And the more you resist the changes happening all around you the more you feel like you’re struggling with life. That is the cause of all the dialogues in your head. You’re either trying to determine how to prevent life from happening around you, or figuring out what to do about it because life did happen. Singer states; “fear is the cause of every problem… anger jealousy and possessiveness.”

The alternative to living a life of fear is accepting that you can’t control it. In order to fully live your life, you must release these fear blockages from your body to allow that energy the release it so desperately desires. The way you do this is just to Let It Go. When it rears its ugly head, your conscious self notices the disturbance appear and instead of focusing on it…you release it and let it go! Every time! If you don’t, it will act as a magnet and suck you back to its debilitating energy. Causing you anxiety or fear and preventing you from living the life you deserve. LET IT GO

Imagine a thorn has embedded itself in your arm. Your choice is to protect that arm from harm and don’t allow anything to touch it or disturb it, or accept the temporary pain and remove it. If you decide on choice A your life now revolves around that decision. Every choice you make is dependent on how your arm will feel. How you sleep, where you go, who can touch you etc… Now imagine that thorn is a fear locked inside you. You can spend your life trying to protect it and keep it from being agitated, or you can release it and move on! The choice is yours. Just Let it Go

Pain is how your body tells you something is wrong externally and fear is how the psyche tells you something is wrong internally. Anxiety, jealousy, self-consciousness, insecurity…all fears causing internal pain. To combat this we try to mask these fears by making external changes. If we’re lonely, we try to find a relationship. If we’re insecure, we make changes to the way we look. These help in the moment but don’t fix what’s truly causing the pain inside. To truly be free of pain and fear we must fix internally what causes the issues so you no longer have to devote your life to your psyche.

We have trained our mind to try and perform the impossible task of constantly changing the external environment to suit the needs of our psyche so we feel safe. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control traffic patterns. We can’t control other peoples reactions or moods or temperaments. But we can control our own reactions to these stimuli. To have a healthy psyche, you need to stop asking it to change the world for you. Stop asking your mind to make the world around you “safe”. Singer states, “The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you’re okay with everything!”

Earlier we spoke about fear being the psyche telling us something is wrong. Its foundation is built upon our fears and determines our behaviors to help avoid the pain these fears bring. If we are doing anything to avoid the pain, then like the thorn in our arm, we are letting pain run our lives. To be free we must view this pain as a temporary shift in our energy flow, nothing to be scared of, but it must be confronted and released. We must determine individually that this pain we have stored is no longer able to control our lives. It is just a feeling, and that feeling will pass. Let It Go

All of our past experiences gets formed into a wall surrounding our psyche and creates the boundaries of our “safe place”. If something tests those boundaries we do our best to move away from them and get back to our comfort zone. Essentially these act as a prison to our awareness and since we try to avoid them, we have no clue what is outside of them. The secret to tearing down these walls is to stop defending them when life tries to penetrate them. Our walls are decorated with memories from the past and dreams of the future. True freedom is on the other side of the walls. Tear them down!

The universe we live in is infinite just as our soul is infinite. The only reason it seems finite is because of the walls we construct in our minds. But if we allow it to expand everywhere, we allow ourselves the freedom to experience all that life has to offer. If we continually push those boundaries it’s how we free ourselves from our self-imposed limitations and escape the psyches influence. Our choices are simple… continue the struggle of keeping our lives “safe” or decide that we’re done decorating our walls and tear them down to freedom.

At a very young age, our psyche is built upon mental images of what we deem right and wrong. It then clings to these things and creates a foundation that follows us through life. When an external stimuli comes into our consciousness we use that foundation as protection from pain or as acceptance of love. This controls who we are and what we show the outside world as “Me”. True Self is none of that. Self is the one that observes all these things and can be free if we allow this foundation to crack and release the preconceived notions of how the world SHOULD be and accept it for how it IS.

Happiness is a choice we must make every day regardless of what influences us in this world. Easier said than done of course but in order to truly be happy we must make the decision that nothing will have the power to take our happiness away! Lost your job….be happy! Someone close to you passed…be happy! Life is going to happen regardless of how we feel about it, and we have the choice to make those feelings happy ones. “You gain nothing by being bothered by life’s events. It doesn’t change the world; you just suffer. There’s always going to be something that can bother you, if you let it.”

Our spiritual journey should be one that is based off eliminating stress, problems and fears. These occur when we resist life as it’s presented to us. If we allow it to flow, we are simply present. We must learn to control our willpower. This power can be directed towards the physical, mental or emotional realms and it’s how we try to manipulate the world to please our psyche. Our willpower is typically used to either resist our past, or events in the future…and what a waste of energy both are! The past can’t be changed and the future hasn’t happened yet! So why waste energy on either?

The time between birth and when we die should be viewed as a truly wonderful gift. For that short time in relativity, why waste it in stress and worry? There are good times and bad throughout that journey and many events that will take place. We can harp on them and let them control our lives. Or we can allow the events to unfold, allow our hearts and minds to stay open to all that life has to offer, and really appreciate this gift we have been given! And we all know death is inevitable, but “the beauty of embracing deep truths is that you don’t have to change your life..just how you live it!”