Summary

One Sentence Summary

One paragraph Summary

What is the foundational knowledge required for me to learn this?

• a prior experience in meditative practice

Reading Comprehension questions from ChatGPT

What ACTIONS/HABITS will I partake after reading this book?

What Questions do I have after reading this book?

• In chapter 1, Singer suggest that we don’t pay attention to our voices; but this seems to contradict the idea from CBT and basic emotional intelligence that we can change our actions by changing our interpretations of the events surrounding our actions. Is what Singer suggesting in conflict with CBT?

What Phrase(s) can I add/validate to my mantras?

• True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection from the reality of the world
• Your inner growth is completely dependent upon the realization that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself
• How are you expected to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you on the inside?
• Ask yourself: Who is it that sees you get angry, insecure, envious, etc? Who notices that changes going on inside? You are the one who’s there, noticing these changes. Therefore, you are not these changes. You start by just watching.
• Because you have chosen to be fearful, your actions have led you to trap yourself in your own self-made prison. If you protect yourself, you will never be free. It’s that simple.
• Here comes the car, and there goes it goes; here comes the thought, and there it goes. They’re both gone together because you didn’t go with them. That is what’s called being centered.
• The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.
• Every single time you relax and release, a piece of the pain leaves forever.
• The core of spiritual work is learning to become comfortable with pain passing through you.
• Here’s the good news: It’s not difficult at all to get past these walls; the natural flow of life tries to tear them down with reality. However, we inadvertently try to defend these walls to protect what we wish to be true of the world. You must realize that when you defend yourself, you are really defending your walls.
• When you truly awake spiritually, you realize you are caged.
• But you are not these events; you’re the one who experienced the events. For how can you define yourself as the things that happened to you?
• When your mind is disturbed, don’t ask, “what do I do about this? What action do I take?”, ask “Who am I that notices this?”
• If you pass through a period of darkness or depression, ask yourself, “Who is aware of the darkness?”
• The highest spiritual path is life itself
• You’re not helping anyone by being miserable
• Events don’t determine whether or not you’re going to be happy
• The solution is simple: Stop resisting by dealing with each situation with acceptance and relaxing into their being.
  • This process of relaxing acceptance through resistance is beneficial to everything in your life because it directly addresses how to keep your heart open when it’s trying to close. Deep inner release is a spiritual path in and of itself; it is the path of nonresistance, the path of acceptance, the path of surrender. The key is to just relax and release AND deal with what’s left in front of you. No need to worry about the rest.
  • Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance.
• Since you know you’re going to die, be willing to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done
• The fear will fade once you understand that the only thing there is to get from life is the growth that comes from experiencing it
• What actually gives life meaning is the willingness to live it; it’s not one big championship nor defining moment, but the small, iterative hour-to-hour courage to experience life’s events in the present moment.
• You fear death because you crave life; as if there’s something to get before your time’s up that you have yet to experience.
• Many people feel that death will take something away from them. The wise person realizes that death is constantly giving them something. Death is giving meaning to your life; you’re the one who throws your life away from all the time you waste.
• You really don’t need more time before death; what you need is more depth of experience during the time you’re given.

Introduction

Singer introduces the main goal of the book, which is to define the concept of the “self” in relation to each of our unique, intuitive experiences.

Chapter 1: The voice inside your head

Summary

One Sentence Summary

You are not your voice, you are your actions.

One Paragraph Summary

The voice that narrates our world is simply a coping mechanism to protect us from the harsh and uncomfortable realities of the world. In a fake attempt of feeling in control though mental manipulation, we try to present the world in a language that we can understand, rather than the actual truth that really represents reality. The TRUTH is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it. The key then is to not try to identify with a particular voice, but rather come to the realization that you are not ANY of these voices.

Notes

You have a mental dialogue going on inside your head…notice that the voice takes both sides of the conversation. It doesn’t care which side it takes, just as long as it gets to keep on talking.

Damn, this is so true. For me, it’s always been about gathering as much pros and cons about a decision.

Imagine you see someone playing chess against themselves. Or imagine you see someone on the street talking to themselves. In both cases, you may wonder, “he obviously knows what’s going to be said/do before he says/acts it, so what’s the point?”

The same is true for the voice inside your head.

If you watch carefully, you’ll see that it’s just trying to go back and forth to find a comfortable place to rest.

The best way to free yourself form this incessant chatter is to step back and view it objectively.

The only way to get your distance from the voice is to stop differentiating what it’s saying.

As soon as you choose a voice that you identify as “yours”, and another being the evil dichotomy, you’ve lost your objectivity.

If you don’t understand the claim that you are not ANY of the voices in your head, then you will continue to try to figure out which of the many things the voice say is really you.

People go though great extents to “find themselves” in the voices when the answer is simple: None of the voices are you.

Side note: this is WAAYYY different than what Napolean Hill or any other mainstream mindset coach talks about in reference to the “other self”, or the “two wolves, one is good, one is bad”, or David J. Schwartz in “The Magic of Thinking Big” as the good and bad thoughts.

Side note 2: To the extent that the following quote matches Singer’s claim, I can agree with his central claim: “I am not my thoughts, I am my actions”

Much of what the voices say are meaningless. Most of the talking is just a waste of time and energy.

The TRUTH is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it.

Side note: How does this align with what Aristotle speaks about in that “reality is created by the mind”?

You will someday come to see that there is no use for that incessant internal chatter, and there is no reason to constantly attempt to figure everything out. Eventually, you will see that the real cause of problems is not life itself. It’s the commotion the mind makes about life that really causes problems.

Singer now begins to ask an important question: if so much of what the voice says is meaningless and unnecessary, then why does it even exist?

The secrete to answering this question lies in understanding why the voice says what it says when it says it. Here are two main reasons:

1. Most often, the voice is a signal to indicate a weak internal state. There’s a buildup of energy inside that needs to be released; the voice talks because you’re not okay inside, and internal talking releases energy.
2. Other times, the voice will act as narration for things that you observe in the real world. These are thoughts, observations, judgments, and opinions about random things (e.g. “what a beautiful day”, “that girl is hot”, “That’s such an ugly sweater”).
   • The narration makes you feel more comfortable with the world around you
   • As if you were a backseat driver, it makes you feel as though things are more in your control in spite of not being the driver of the car
   • A tree is no longer just a tree, rather it’s something that you saw, labeled, and judged; by verbalizing it internally, you brought that initial direct experience of the world into the realm of your thoughts, from which it becomes integrated with your other thoughts, such as those making up your value system and historical experiences

Now this next section is so well written, that I’m just going to type everything I see because I want to show the whole context.

" When you’re thinking you’re free to create whatever thoughts you want in your mind, and these thoughts are expressed though voices.

This inner world is an alternative environment that is under your control. The outside world, however, marches to its own laws.

When the voice narrates the outside world to you, those thoughts are now side-by-side, in parity, with all your other thoughts.

All these thoughts intermix and actually influence your experience of the world around you.

What you end up experiencing is really a personal presentation of the world according to you (in a language you understand), rather than the stark, unfiltered experience of what is really out there. This mental manipulation of the outer experience allows you to buffer reality as it comes in.

In other words, you manage to control the experience of reality so that it all fits together inside your mind.

Your consciousness is actually experience your mental model/interpretation of reality, but not true reality itself. "

You re-create the world within your mind because you can control your mind whereas you can’t control the world.

That’s why you mentally talk about it; it makes you feel, in imaginary land rather than in reality, more empowered.

The truth is: this world unfolds in a way that has very little, if anything, to do with your thoughts.

As David J. Lieberman said, reality is here to stay; this world and its reality were here long before you came, and it will be here long after you leave it.

In the futile attempt in controlling the world around you, you’re really just trying to hold yourself together.

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection from the reality of the world

And this is accomplished by reminding yourself that YOU are the one inside that notices the voice talking. This is the way out.

Chapter 2: Your inner roommate

Summary

Inner work is all about working on how well you interpret the events around you. Call it CBT, self-growth, whatever, it’s all the same.

Notes

Your inner growth is completely dependent upon the realization that the only way to find peace and contentment is to stop thinking about yourself

Wow, this is similar to what Peterson talks about. The more you think about yourself, the more miserable you become. Isn’t it a paradox how “inner growth” is NOT “thinking about yourself”???

You’re ready to grow when you realize that the “I” who is always talking inside will never be content.

When a problem is disturbing you, instead of asking, “What should I do about this?”, ask, “what part of me is being disturbed by this?”

To ask, “what should I do about this?” is to validate the narrative that there really is a problem outside that must be dealt with. But if you wish to achieve inner peace, you must instead understand why you perceive (interpret) a particular situation as a problem.

Side note: This is kinda similar to CBT again; we are changing how we view the events, rather than feeling ashamed of who we are.

The solution to your every problem starts by asking, “Who notices this inner disturbance?Who is it that sees this?”

Similar to what Eleanor Roosevelt says, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent”

The very fact that you can see the inner disturbance means that YOU are not it because the process of seeing something requires a subject-object relationship.

This act of maintaining objective awareness of the inner problem is always better than losing yourself in the outer situation.

The difference between the worldly person and the spiritual person is not in that the worldly person has many material possessions, but rather the worldly person believes that the solution to their inner problems can be found in the outside world. Worldly people believe that if they change things on the outside (moving to a new city, trying a new wardrobe style, earning more money, etc) then they’ll be okay on the inside.

Like what David J. Lieberman mentions, no one believes that they can gain better clarity to their problems if they were angry, anxious, or scared; likewise Singer suggests that dealing with our initial reactions is the first step in dealing with our problems.

How are you expected to solve anything outside until you own how the situation affects you on the inside?

You get to break the habit of thinking that the solution to your problems is to rearrange things outside.

The only permanent solution to your problems is to go inside and let go of the part of you that seems to have so many problems with reality; once you take care of that, you’ll be clear enough to deal with what’s left.

Ask yourself: Who is it that sees you get angry, insecure, envious, etc? Who notices that changes going on inside? You are the one who’s there, noticing these changes. Therefore, you are not these changes. You start by just watching.

Side note: I guess this is the part that clarifies the “other-self” from Napoleon Hill and what Singer is suggesting. Essentially, they’re both talking about pretty similar things, but Hill suggest the the “other self” is the negative part of the talking mind while the “self” is the mission-oriented, positive side; per contra, Singer suggests that it’s ALL the talking parts that are the “other self”, while the “self” is us as individuals noticing and becoming aware of this chatter (both the good and the bad.)

The path to free yourself from negative talk is to simply watch it happen; then, give it a name, body, and personality–it is now someone that’s not you. Then, allow it to be your friend. This is what we call inner work: changing the habitual negative thoughts into positive ones.

Chapter 3: Who are you?

Given the subject-object relation, and knowing that we cannot be that which we observe, then that begs the fundamental question:

Who am I?

Ask yourself these questions:

• Who sees what I see?
• Who hears what I hear?
• Who knows that I am aware>
• Who feels fear?

You realize that the outside world and the flow of inner emotions come and go. But you, the one who observes these things, remain continuously aware of whatever passes before you.

So, who are you?

Chapter 4: The lucid self

Summary

According to Singer, Consciousness is our ability to become aware of the Self; the self is the entity that is aware and notices the objects around it–be it physical objects that involve our five senses, or inanimate thoughts that involve our emotions, intellect, and reason.

Notes

Just like in lucid dreaming, lucid awareness is the difference between being aware that you are aware in your daily life, and not being aware while going through the motions.

When you are lucid, you remain inwardly aware that you are the one who is experiencing both the events and the corresponding thoughts and emotions.

When a thought is created in this state of awareness, instead of getting lost in it, you remain aware that you are the one who is thinking the thought–you are lucid.

The best way to learn about consciousness is through your own direct experience.

The essence of consciousness is awareness, and awareness has the ability to become more aware of one thing and less aware of something else–this is the ability to focus.

The key is that consciousness has the ability to concentrate on different things. In terms of subject-object relation, the subject (consciousness) has the ability to selectively focus awareness on specific objects. If your consciousness concentrates enough on the object itself, your sense of awareness loses itself in the object; it is no longer aware that it is aware of the object; it just becomes object-conscious (this is what it means to lose oneself in his work).

Total consciousness goes beyond the 5 senses; they include the thoughts and emotions as well.

According to Singer, the “lost soul” is the consciousness that has dropped into the place where one human’s thoughts, emotions, and sensory perceptions of sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell, are all synchronized.

What differentiates a conscious, centered human from a person who is not so conscious is simply the focus of their awareness; it’s not a difference in the consciousness itself, because all consciousness is the same, the same way all light from the sun is the same, but may shine on different parts of the environment.

Consciousness is neither pure nor impure; it has no qualities. It’s just there, aware that it’s aware. The difference is that when your consciousness is not centered within, it becomes totally focused on the objects of consciousness. When you are a centered being, however, your consciousness is always aware of being conscious. Your awareness of being is independent of the inner and outer objects you happen to be aware of.

If you really want to understand this difference, you must begin by realizing that consciousness can focus on anything, including itself–and this is what true meditation accomplishes. In deep meditation, the focus of consciousness is turned back to the Self; it is the return to the root of your being, the simple awareness of being aware. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. You woke up. That is the nature of Self, who you are.

The more you are willing to just let the world be something you’re aware of, the more it will let you be who you are–the awareness, the Self, the Atman, the Soul.

Chapter 5: Infinite Energy

Summary

The key to accessing the unlimited, internal energy reservoir is by living a life that’s authentic and open. This means cultivating the habit of remaining open in spite of how the world responds. The reward is the ever elusive love, enthusiasm, excitement, and energy that every seeks but fails to attain.

Notes

Inner energy is that sudden spark of instant energy we get when, after months of being depressed, our ex reaches out to us and wants us back, and we instantly become overjoyed. That’s the kind of inner energy that Singer is talking about.

This energy is always available to you. At any moment you can draw upon it. It wells up and fills you from the inside, until it overfills to those around you. When you’re filled with this kind of energy, you feel like you can take on the world. When it’s flowing strongly, you can actually feel it coursing through your veins.

The only reason why you don’t feel this energy all the time is because you block it; you block it by closing your heart, mind, and by pulling yourself into a restrictive space inside, which closes you off from all energy.

When you close your heart or close you mind, you hide in the darkness within you. There is no light. There is no energy. There is nothing flowing. The energy is still there, but it’s blocked from usage.

These energy centers are what the yogis call chakras, and the heart is one of the main chakras. But you can call it whatever you want, because different cultures will call it different things (“chi”, “spirit, etc.). All great traditions talk about spiritual energy.

To access this internal energy source, you must simply be open and receptive in your heart; under your control, you can cultivate the habit of being open to people.

Under normal circumstances, our state of openness is left to psychological factors based from our past experience. Unique impressions from past experiences can become activated by certain environmental stimuli.

Side note: Singer suggests that we practice the habit of always being open and receptive. But how does this match with the ugly reality of the real world, and the art of saying less than necessary from books like “48 laws of power”? I think it’s a trade off: you can feel enthusiasm, joy, and love at all times regardless of what happens in the external world; or, you can swing in between highs and lows while having a more strategic approach to the outside world.

Singer suggests to learn to stay open no matter what happens. If you do, you get for free what everyone else is struggling for: love, enthusiasm, excitement, and energy.

Side note: to the point that Singer suggested above, I think this would be the same energy that my brother Max has. In his case, he is highly successful, while being highly energetic and enthusiastic. Hell, in that case, I think that’s a habit worth developing! Naturally, the question of masculinity comes into play, in which case I defer to the qualities of a masculine man. Remember that we become a man the moment we take responsibility for caring for another person.

If you really want to stay open, pay attention when you feel love and enthusiasm. Then, ask yourself why you can’t feel this all the time. Why does it have to go away? The answer is obvious: it only goes away if you choose to close.

You feel love until somebody says something you don’t like, and then you give up the love. It’s your choice.

Through meditation, awareness, and willful effort, you can learn to keep your centers open. You do this by just relaxing and releasing.

If you love life, you don’t buy into the concept that there is anything worth closing over; nothing every, is worth closing your heart over.

Chapter 6: The secretes of the spiritual heart

Summary

Compartmentalization comes at a price of having a blocked heart. The energy flow is real, and unless it’s released, it will leak out in unintended and unhealthy ways. The way to be free is to let it go, feel the blockage painfully come out of you, as you setback and relax into the release.

Notes

Your heart is an instrument made of extremely subtle energy that few people come to appreciate.

Our ability to give and receive love depends on whether our hearts are open or closed. All these different emotions happen because the heart goes through changes.

In truth, you are not your heart, the same way you are not your emotions, but you are the experiencer of your heart.

The energy flow we experience during moments of inspiration, enthusiasm, and strength come from the knowing that we are loved–a sense of confidence. This energy flow goes by many names, some of which include Chi, Shakti, and spirit.

The heart controls the energy flow by opening and closing.

The heart closes when it becomes blocked by stored, unfinished energy patterns from the past.

Our five senses are not windows nor ports through which we experience the world; they are sensory processes that act as electronic sensing devices.

If the energy patterns that are coming into your psyche create disturbances, you will resist them and create blockage within you.

Ideally, these energy patterns should be gone as soon as you perceive them, like perceiving trees passing by you as you drive your car. When you have no personal issues with these patterns, then these impressions are processed freely. While this system working, you’re fine. Driving is an experience, trees passing by are an experience, and cars passing by are an experience. These experiences are gifts that are being given to you, like a great movie.

This is what it means to be alive.

What it means to live life is to experience the moment that is passing through you, and then experience the next moment, and the moment after that.

It’s a phenomenal system when it is working properly. That is how an awakened being lives in the “now”. They are present, life is present, and the wholeness of life is passing through them.

However, this system doesn’t work when we misuse it by judging and labeling the experiences. Using the car example again, you may see a car that looks like your ex’s, and now, a simple car that’s driving by has creating narratives in your head that don’t allow you to let the experience pass through.

At the physical level, nothing different is going on. It’s just a car that happens to be the same color as your ex’s. But at the mental level, the impression did not make it through.

When the next moment comes, you no longer notice the rest of the trees. You’re not seeing the rest of the cars. Your heart and mind are fixated on that one car, even though it’s gone.

This is what we call the blockage. All subsequent experiences are trying to pass through you, but something has happened inside that has left this past experience unfinished.

What happens to that experience (the ex, the trauma, the gift, etc) that didn’t make it through?

At some point it will disappear from the spotlight as you focus on something else. But what you don’t realize is that your entire experience of life is about to change because of what didn’t make it through you. Life must now compete with this blockage for your attention, and the impression does not just sit there quietly.

You will find that your thinking tendency will gravitate towards that blockage–constantly. This is an attempt to find a way to process it through your mind. All that inner noise is just your attempt to process the blocked energy and get it out of the way.

Long term, the energy patterns that cannot make it through you are pushed out of the forefront of the mind and held until you are prepared to release them.

Side note: I wonder if this is what Napolean Hill refers to as the dominant thoughts that carry a lot of emotion becomes what we realize in reality.

These energy patterns, which hold tremendous detail about the events associated with them, are real. They don’t just disappear. They stay inside you and become a problem because they may be held for very long time and leak into reality in unintended and unhealthy ways.

As you willfully struggle to keep these events from passing through your conscious, the energy first tries to release by manifesting through mind. This is why the mind becomes so active.

When the energy can’t make it through the mind because of conflicts with other thoughts and mental models/concepts, it then tries to release through the heart. That is what creates all the emotional activity.

When you resist even that release, the energy gets packed up and forced into deep storage within the heart. In the yogic tradition, that unfinished energy pattern is called Samskara. A Samskara is nothing more than a blockage/impression form the past.

A Samskara is nothing more than a blockage/impression form the past.

From a personal experience, a more familiar language is “compartmentalizing”. Eventually, as you fill up your emotional box with these experiences, and then leave it on the shelf to never take it out, it will inevitably overfill and spill when you’re least ready and least expecting.

Now, this brings us the the next important question: given that our heart can open and close from our experiences, what causes these frequent changes in the state of the heart?

This happens when a Samskara is stimulated. Maybe some proxy event that triggers unresolved emotions to spring forth. The Samskara opens like a flower and begins to release the stored energy. Suddenly, the flash of what you experienced when the original event took place rush into your consciousness. In an instant, you begin experiencing feelings you left in the past.

So what’s the cure? How do we unblock?

Just let it go.

When an event triggers a Samskara, simply smile; be happy that this Samskara, which has been stored down there for all this time, has the opportunity to make it through you. Be open, relax your heart, forgive, laugh, or do anything you want–just don’t suppress.

Of course it hurts when it comes up; it’s stored pain. It’s going to release with pain. That’s the pain that we “put in the box”, and are now paying the debt with.

You have a choice: do you want to try to change the world so it doesn’t disturb your Samskara, or are you willing to go through this process of purification?

Chapter 7: Transcending the tendency to close

Summary

Ultimately, if you protect yourself perfectly, you will never grow. All your habits and idiosyncrasies will stay the same. Life becomes stagnant when people protect their stored issues.

Notes

All that goes on inside also has its foundation in an underlying energy field. It is the movements in this energy field that create our mental and emotional patterns as well as our inner drives, urges, and instinctual reactions.

The most primal energy flow is the survival instinct–specifically the desire to protect ourselves.

But in a modern world where our basic survival needs our met and we are physically safe, our protective energies have adopted toward defending the individual psychologically, rather than physiologically. We now experience the daily need to defend our self-concepts rather than our bodies. This means our major struggles end up being with our own inner fears, insecurities, and destructive behavior patterns, and not with outside forces.

Side note: I wonder if this is why some men like camping. It taps back into that native primal state, knowing that if their self-image is harmed and they are shunned or exiled from society, they will be less insecure knowing that they are familiar with the primitive state.

Since it is not socially acceptable to run into the woods and hide like a deer, you hide inside; you withdraw and pull back behind your protective shield, barriers, and walls. But when you do this, you are actually closing down your energy centers.

When you close down and protect yourself, you are pulling a shell around the part of you that is weak; you are protecting your ego and your self-concept.

The problem is, that same part of you that you overprotect is underdeveloped; it’s so sensitive that the slightest little thing causes it to overreact. But hiding, withdrawing, or putting up walls is only going to make that part of you weaker; you’re locking your illness inside yourself, and it will only get worse.

Because you have chosen to be fearful, your actions have led you to trap yourself in your own self-made prison. If you protect yourself, you will never be free. It’s that simple.

Ultimately, if you protect yourself perfectly, you will never grow. All your habits and idiosyncrasies will stay the same. Life becomes stagnant when people protect their stored issues.

But living like this allows for very little spontaneous joy, enthusiasm, and excitement for life.

Most people just go from day to day protecting themselves and making sure nothing goes too wrong, but what kind of life does this lead to? None. It simply creates an existence, abut it does not create a dense life full of vitality.

Side note: Think of Mrs. Bunches, or anyone who is overly anxious. Now think of the sermon by pastor Steve Ezra. I think this chapter really illustrates how we rob ourselves of the genuine gifts of life just from our own insecurities.

Think about it. Most people go day-by-day, and respond to the question of “how was your day?” with “not bad”, as in “I’ll survive yet another mundane existence until I die”.

To the majority of people, a good day means you made it through without getting hurt. The longer you live like this, the more closed you become.

The good news in all of this is that growth is simple: if you really want to grow, expose yourself

Real spiritual growth happens when all parts are unified.

Because there is no part of you that you’re not willing to see, the mind is no longer divided into the conscious and subconscious.

In order to reach this state of awareness, you must let your entire psyche surface. Right now, many fragmented parts of your psyche are held within you. But if you wish to be free, it all gets to be equally exposed to your awareness and released. When you are no longer willing to identify with the part of you that is separating itself into a million pieces, you are ready for real growth.

So, practically speaking, how do we begin this painful yet vital process of growth?

Start by simply observing your tendency to protect and defend yourself. If you practice mediation, you will notice the times throughout your day when your feel your emotional reaction coming up to defend yourself. When you feel yourself getting tight or tense, that’s your cue that it’s time to make a choice: to grow or to wither away.

The reward you get for not protecting your psyche is liberation; you are free to walk through this world without a problem on your mind. You are just having fun experiencing whatever happens to you. That voice that speaks “what will they think of me?” will be long gone.

Here comes the car, and there goes it goes; here comes the thought, and there it goes. They’re both gone together because you didn’t go with them. That is what’s called being centered.

If you aren’t centered, your consciousness is just following whatever it catches its attention. You see the car drive by and you’re off doing something about it. This creates a scatter-brained person who can’t hold jobs very well nor relationships that work out for them; their energy is everywhere, rather than a focused laser.

You have the ability to not go with any of these thoughts. You just sit there in the seat of consciousness and let go. A thought or emotion emerges, you notice it, and it passes by because you allow it to (you willingly choose to let got).

The Self is watching the inside energies change in accordance to both inside and outside forces. All the energies that it watches will just come and go, unless YOU lose your center of consciousness and go with them.

A wise person remains centered enough to let go every time the energy shifts into a defensive mode. Letting go means falling behind the energy instead of focusing on that feeling and allowing it to grow in importance as you feed it more attention. It takes a brief moment of conscious effort to decide that you’re not going there.

It’s a matter of taking the risk that you are better off letting go than going with the energy.

Only you can take inner freedom away from yourself, or give it to yourself. You are 100% in the driver’s seat.

chapter 8: Let go now or fall

Summary

You either let go or you don’t.

Fear is the cause of every problem. Problems arise when you cling to fear by insisting that everything must be controlled to protect you against what you fear. The reality is that growth happens when we’re exposed. When fear pops up, let recognize it, and then let it pass. It’s as simple as letting go.

Notes

The natural ups and downs of life can either generate personal growth or personal fear; if you make a mistake, learn from it, and move on, rather than vowing to never make a mistake gain, because we’re all humans at the end of the day.

How you narrate these ups and downs determines the level of growth you acquire.

If you have a lot of fear, you won’t like change, and this will lead to behavior (because the mind leads to our actions) where you create a world around you that is predictable, controllable, and definable; you will create a world that does not stimulate the potential genes within you that will allow you to rise up and confront fear.

You can only do one of two things when confronted with fear: (1) you can recognize/acknowledge that you have it (according to the book, “Way of the Superior Man”, a superior man knows his fears are his sharpest definitions of himself) and work to release it (2) keep it inside and try to hide it, avoiding exposure and retreating back into the womb.

The second option is the most unsafe because it creates a “me against the world” narrative.

A fearful person who shrinks in fear will hold a more absolute, less wholistic, perspective on life. They will define how the world “should” be so that it they can feel safe participating in it, rather than looking objectively at how the world really is and questioning why certain values should be in place.

The part of you that’s afraid and not okay with itself can’t face the natural unfolding of life because it’s not under your control.

It’s really simple: that which doesn’t disturb you is okay, and that which does disturb you is not.

This means we find ourselves defining the scope of the outer experience based upon our inner problems. But if you want to grow spiritually to be free, you have to be willing to take things as they come.

As you grow spiritually, you’ll realize that your attempts to protect yourself from your problems actually create more problems.

If you attempt to arrange people, places, and things so that they don’t disturb you, it will begin to feel like life is against you because you feel the need to fight and control everything to fit into the standard of what you think is right and wrong based off of what makes you fearful.

So, if we’re not going to try to control everything and choose a narrative that’s more accurate with how the world functions, then what’s the alterative? The alternative is to not fight with life, because life was never under your control to begin with.

Seek not to change the world, for it is a fleeting thing, ever-changing, and beyond thy grasp. Seek instead to control thyself, and thou shall find true power and inner peace.

Once you decide not to fight with life, you’ll get the opportunity to confront the fear that’s making you want to run.

Fear is caused by energy blockages; when your heart is weak, it becomes susceptible to lower vibrations, and one of the lowest vibrations of all is fear

Fear is the cause of every problem

Fear is the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealously, and possessiveness.

The purpose of spiritual evolution is to remove the blockage that causes your fear.

It’s hard to understand how we decided that avoiding our inner issues is an intelligent thing to do, but everyone’s doing it.

You’ll then realize that life is actually trying to help you (nothing happens to you; everything happens for you)

There is a law of the universe you will learn very early in the game because it is an unavoidable truth. You will learn it early, but you will fall many times while trying to adhere to it. The law is straightforward:

When your stuff gets hit, let it go right then because it will be harder later

It won’t be easier if you explore it or play with it, hoping to take the edge off. If you want to be free to the core of your being, you must let go right away because it will not be easier later.

The key is to understand that if you don’t let go immediately, the disturbing force of the activated energy draws the focus of your consciousness.

Side note: how does this compare with Ray Dalio’s success formula? Pain + REFLECTION = progress?

If you choose to focus on the fear, you simply lose the fixed point of consciousness from which you were objectively aware of your surroundings. Your consciousness leaves the centered position of witnessing the many energies around you, and you get stuck into focusing on just one of them.

When you fall into darkness, you manifest darkness. You then become surrounded by people who will treat you accordingly. You find yourself putting more of that kind of energy into your environment and it comes back to you. This is how the negative cycle begins.

Everything you put out comes back.

And all you had to do to avoid this was to let go from the beginning.

If you let go, and permit the purification process to take place inside, that blockage will be released. When it’s released and allowed to flow, it becomes purified and merges back into your center of consciousness.

The secrete of ascension is to never look down, but always up.

You either let go or you don’t.

Chapter 9: Removing your inner thorn

Summary

It’s okay to feel the inner disturbances as long as they don’t disturb your seat of consciousness. That’s when you’re free.

How do you find those thorns you need to work on? Feel them. Notice them pass through, acknowledge them by their name, and then let it pass.

Notes

The spiritual journey is one of constant transformation. In order to grow, you must give up the struggle to remain the same, and learn to embrace change at all times.

The best analogy that Singer uses is the thorn: Imagine you have a painful thorn. You can either ensure that nothing comes near it that would provoke pain, or you could examine the thorn and decide to take it out.

The effects of the choice you make will determine the course of the rest of your life.

If you choose to build a life to constantly check on the torn and ensure it never gets touched, then the truth is that the torn completely runs your entire life. It affects all your decisions. You will end up having a life that’s devoted to treating the symptoms of your torn.

It turns out that the life protecting yourself from your problem becomes a perfect reflection of the problem itself.

Singer references a popular example like the unhappy marriage from David J. Lieberman’s book, “Never get angry again”. I’ll include it here because repetition is the mother of mastery.

This is in reference to the ego’s need to be right:

We can illustrate this in 5 simple sentences:

1. Jane grew up thinking she was “bad” and undeserving of kindness and respect.
2. Predictably, Jane marries Bob who “knew” he was unlovable and felt consumed by self-hatred.
3. Bob protected himself by acting cruelly towards others before they could act cruelly to him first.
4. Bob wasn’t surprised by Jane’s increasing withdraw and remoteness from him, because he “knew” no one could ever love him.
5. They endured 20 years of torture together, proving how right they were about themselves and life

Here’s the good news: you can remove the root thorn. You can do this by looking deep within yourself, to the core of your being, and decide that you don’t want the weakness part of you running your life. You want to be free from this.

You are not these inner disturbances, but rather the observer who notices these things. Because your consciousness notices and is aware of these disturbances, you can free yourself.

How do you find those thorns you need to work on? Feel them. The difference between one who feels and one who is overly emotional responding versus reacting; the emotional will react without control and observation; the one who feels notices and acknowledges the emotions by name, and then, permits them to pass.

Just sit and observe. When something triggers you, what does that voice say? How does it make you feel?

It’s okay to feel the inner disturbances as long as they don’t disturb your seat of consciousness. That’s when you’re free

Chapter 10: Stealing freedom for your soul

Summary

The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.

Notes

The prerequisite to true freedom is to decide that you do not want to suffer anymore. This is what Buddha meant when he said that all life is suffering.

The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that’s the only time everything will be okay.

Chapter 11: Pain, the price of Freedom

Summary

Remember that if you close around something, you will be sensitive about that subject for the rest of your life. Because you stored it inside you, you will be afraid that it will happen again. But if you relax instead of closing, it will work its way through you. If you stay open, the blocked energy inside of you will release naturally, and you will not take on anymore. This is the core of spiritual work.

Notes

Coming to peace with pain is one of the essential requirements for true spiritual growth. No expansion can take place without periods of discomfort.

Change involves challenging what is familiar to us and daring to question our traditional needs for safety, comfort, and control.

It’s perfectly fine and expected to not be okay with feelings of inner disturbances, but you get to be able to sit quietly and face them if you desire to see where they come from (thus allowing you to let go and grow).

Once you can face your disturbances, you will realize that there is a layer of pain seated deep in the core of your heart. This pain is so uncomfortable, so challenging, and so destructive to the individual self, that your entire life is spent avoiding it; your entire life is built upon ways of being, thinking, acting, and believing that were developed to avoid this pain.

Every single time you relax and release, a piece of the pain leaves forever.

You can bet that you will notice that it feels hot inside as pain passes. In fact, as you relax into the energy of the pain, you may feel tremendous heat in your heart. That is the pain being purified from your heart. Learn to enjoy that burning, because it means you are growing.

Remember that if you close around something, you will be sensitive about that subject for the rest of your life. Because you stored it inside you, you will be afraid that it will happen again. But if you relax instead of closing, it will work its way through you. If you stay open, the blocked energy inside of you will release naturally, and you will not take on anymore. This is the core of spiritual work.

The core of spiritual work is learning to become comfortable with pain passing through you.

Chapter 12: Taking down the walls

Summary

The walls we built to protect us are actually prisons that keep us from experiencing the joys of life.

Here’s the good news: It’s not difficult at all to get past these walls; the natural flow of life tries to tear them down with reality. However, we inadvertently try to defend these walls to protect what we wish to be true of the world.

Notes

The more you sit in that seat of witness consciousness, the more you realize that since you are completely independent of what you are watching, there must be a way to break free of the magical hold that the psyche has on your awareness. There must be a way out.

Side note: I wonder if this is what Naval Ravikant meant when he talks about the idea of “freedom from the mind itself”

This inner breakthrough to complete freedom is traditionally known as “enlightenment”.

Singer then provides an excellent allegory of a man who creates his own prison from a perfect house.

The allegory of life inside the house is a perfect fit for our predicament. Our consciousness, our awareness of being, is living deep inside of us in an artificially sealed off area that is absolute. Like the house, our consciousness has four walls, a floor, and a roof; the only light we get is what we manage to create for ourselves.

What does Singer mean by this? He means that if we don’t choose to create good situations for ourselves, there is darkness. So, we end up making ourselves busy by trying to bring things in there with us–hoping to create at least a little light, in the house of our own making where we have sealed ourselves off from the rest of the world–just like in the allegory.

That is the visual: you are inside a house, totally sealed off from natural light, and the house is sitting in the middle of an open field full of bright light.

So in the context of your consciousness, what is your house made of?

What are your walls made of?

Your house is made of your thoughts and emotions. The walls are made of your psyche. That’s what your house is.

It is all your past experiences, thoughts, and emotions; all the concepts, views, beliefs, and narratives you have collected about yourself, other people, and the world around you.

This mental structure completely blocks you from whatever natural light is on the outside of its walls.

You are so entranced into paying attention to your thoughts and emotions that you never go beyond the borders they create.

That which you collected from your past forms a boundary that you intuitively want to avoid. That’s natural, that’s what we do with walls: we avoid running into them.

But because you avoid running into them, they lock you inside their perimeter; they become your prison because they are the boundaries of your awareness. And because you are not willing to approach them, you cannot see what is beyond them.

Side note: This is exactly like the alpha trap and the trap of optimization I’ve previously wrote about. When you seek to optimize something, you become trap in a local minima.

It is often said that you must go through the darkest night in order to get to the infinite light. This is because what we call darkness is really the blockage of light. You get to go past these walls.

Here’s the good news: It’s not difficult at all to get past these walls; the natural flow of life tries to tear them down with reality. However, we inadvertently try to defend these walls to protect what we wish to be true of the world.

You must realize that when you defend yourself, you are really defending your walls.

There is nothing else to defend there, just your awareness of being and the limited house you built to live in. What you are defending is the house you built to protect yourself, and you are hiding inside.

If something happens to challenge the walls of your psyche, you get highly defensive. You have built a self-concept, moved inside, and now you defend that home with your ego need to be right in your mental perception of how the world should work.

So what’s the way out? These walls are made up of thoughts; all you have to do is step outside of your thoughts into the unlimited. That’s your journey out. True freedom is very close, it’s just on the other side of your walls.

How exactly do we step out of our thoughts and bring down our walls? Simply by letting everyday life take down the walls you hold around yourself. You simply don’t participate in supporting, maintaining, and defending your fortress.

Side note: But does this mean I accept the labels people put on me as I interact with the world??

Instead of focusing on enlightenment, focus instead on the walls of your own making that are blocking the light out.

Chapter 13: Far, far beyond

Summary

When you truly awake spiritually, you realize you are caged.

Notes

The world seems finite because your perception hits mental boundaries, but in truth, everything is infinite.

In order to truly go beyond your mental model, you must first understand why you built it; the easiest way to understand this is to study what happens when the model doesn’t work.

These are often impactful events in our lives: somebody leaves us, something goes wrong, something shakes up your model to the core, etc.

When this happens, your entire view of who you believe you are, including your relationship to everyone around you, begins to fall apart.

You panic and do everything you can to hold it together. You beg, fight, and struggle to try to keep your world from collapsing.

Side note: for me, this happened when I moved to my company head quarters.

When experiences like these happen, you realize just how fragile your model is.

If you really want to see why you do things, then don’t do them and see what happens, then, if the doing is worth doing, write it down so you don’t forget.

There’s a reason to everything you do. If you don’t know why you do a certain action, see what happens when you stop doing it.

There are two ways life can play out for you: (1) you can devote your whole life to the process of making sure everything fits within your limited model (2) you can devote your life to freeing yourself from the limits of your model.

The confines of your comfort zone are no different than the tiger is closed confinement. But instead of limiting your physical movements, this inner cage limits the expanse of your consciousness.

Most people who are deeply afraid don’t see a cage of confinement; they see a shield of protection against the reality of the world.

When you truly awake spiritually, you realize you are caged.

You realize that there’s no real reason for imposing these limits on yourself.

A cage doesn’t have to look like a cage. A dog with an electric collar is just as much in a cage as a tiger that’s physically bounded.

Decorating your cage with beautiful experiences, fond memories, and great dreams is not the same as going beyond.

Some people use the brilliance of their mind to stay inside their self-made cage.

Chapter 14: Letting go of false solidity

Summary

Notes

You are not your thoughts because you are aware of your thoughts; you are the conscious being who is aware of all these inner and outer things.

Consciousness is a dynamic field of awareness that has the ability to either narrowly focus or broadly expand.

When consciousness concentrates narrowly enough, it loses its broader sense of self. It no longer experiences itself as a field of pure consciousness; it begins to relate itself more to the object it’s focused upon.

Side note: this is precisely who people who are all in on their work suffer from a lack of perspective.

Your sense of self is determined by where you are focusing your consciousness.

Clinging happens when some objects of your conscious focus remain in the consciousness while others pass through, and your senses eventually relate more to that object. Suddenly, these objects serve as fixed points to create a sense of orientation, relationship, and security in the midst of constant inner change. And this need for orientation extends to the outside world.

Although you are clinging to inner thoughts, you use those thoughts to relate yourself to the multitude of physical objects that come in through your senses.

You can then create thoughts that tie all the objects together, and you cling to the entire structure.

Because you cling to it, it stays fixed. And because it stays fixed, you relate to it above all else. This is the birth of the psyche.

The more consciousness narrows its focus onto this mental structure, the greater the tendency to utilize it to define the concept of self. Clinging creates the bricks and mortar with which we build a conceptual self.

The essence of spirituality can be answers with one question: “who are you that is lost and trying to build a concept of yourself in order to be found?”

You will never find yourself in what you have built to define yourself because it’s YOU who is doing the building.

According to Singer, the principles, beliefs, values, and ideals we hold are not what define who we are–they are simply thoughts that we’ve pulled around ourselves in an attempt to define ourselves in a state where we are lost–it is an attempt to create a sense of stability and steadiness inside.

Having a set of principles like what Ray Dalio mentions is, according to Singer, a false sense of security.

By having these preconceived notions about yourself, other people, and the world (e.g. “I am an INTJ”, “people are irrational”, “the world is out to get me”) you feel safer and more in control–but again, that’s just a false sense of security.

This is why letting the walls come down is so scary; you’ve never let anyone, not even yourself access to your true inner self without the protection of your mental model.

In most societies you are well rewarded for how good you are at clinging and building.

If you get that model down absolutely right, and behave consistently every time, you have actually “created” someone. And if this someone you create is what others need and want, you can become very popular and materially successful.

And if this someone is not succeeding, you can simply change the character by adjusting your thoughts, and away we go. It’s just like re-branding, marketing, and PR.

Side note: again, this goes contrary to the ideas behind some of the greats, like Ray Dalio and Robert Greene.

Just imagine how nice you are to people when they behave in accordance with your expectations. Now think about how you close up and pull back from them when they don’t.

What are you doing? You are trying to change someone’s behavior by leaving impressions on their mind. You are attempting to alter their collection of beliefs, thoughts, and emotions so that the next time they act, it is in manner you expect. In truth, we are all doing this to each other every day.

Side note: FACTS! I’m guilty of this. Back when I was in university, when that one guy started out friendly with me, and then he acted weird, I completely ignored him and treated him as a stranger; I would not even acknowledge his presence. The same happens when people do the same to me; if at work, I get the cold shoulder, or when my siblings say a sarcastic comment to invalidate my actions, it all makes sense.

Why do we let this happen to us? Why do we care so much whether other people accept the facade we put out there?

It all comes down to understanding why we are clinging to our self-concept.

So here’s Singer’s call to action: Stop clinging, drop the facade and don’t cling to a new one, then let your thoughts and emotions become unanchored and begin passing through you. It will be scary at first, but if you persist, you will be rewarded with great peace and a stopping to the noise, confusion, anxiety, and constant changing of inner energies. Ultimately, you will learn that there is no solidity and you will become comfortable with that.

Side note: Wow, this is quite the opposite compared to CBT. Hell, compared to what Ray Dalio recommends, it’s still quite different.

You will be rewarded with the awareness that each moment of each day is unfolding and you neither have control nor crave it. You have no concepts, no beliefs, no dreams, no hopes, and no security. You are no longer building mental models of what’s going on, but life is going on anyway. You are perfectly comfortable just being aware of it. Here comes this moment, then the next moment, and then the next.

And this is really what has always happened. Moment after moment, has been passing before your consciousness. The difference is that now you see it happening. You see that your emotions and your mind are reacting to these moments that are passing through, and you’re doing nothing to stop it. You’re doing nothing to control it. You’re just letting life unfold, both outside and inside you.

Side note: It seems to be that this would simply describe a drifter, according to Napoleon Hill’s book “Outwitting the Devil”. This seems like the mindset of a monk. And while monks are are peace with themselves, they also don’t make a lot of money nor have lots of responsibilities. Given this context, I don’t know if I fully agree with what Singer is proposing, and that’s okay, because this book is meant to prepare me for the next impactful book.

The key to dropping your walls all depends on your ability to remain fearful and not take any action to protect yourself. You must be willing to see that this need to protect yourself is where the entire personality comes from. It was created by building a mental and emotional structure to get away from that sense of fear. You are now standing face-to-face with the root of the psyche.

As you drop your walls, you will observe the thoughts, emotions, and worldly impressions pouring into your consciousness. There will be an overwhelming tendency to lean forward and grab onto selective impressions and principles; you will try to take all your memories, pull them together in an orderly fashion, and claim that’s who you are.

But you are not these events; you’re the one who experienced the events. For how can you define yourself as the things that happened to you?

You are aware of your existence before they happened to have passed through.

You do not have to cling to your experiences in the name of building yourself. This is a false self you are building inside. It is just a concept of yourself that you hide behind.

Anytime anything goes wrong in the protection model you built about yourself, other people, and the world, you defend and rationalize in order to get it back together.

People become afraid when this happens because they feel their very existence is at stake, and they will fight and argue until they get control back. This is all because we have attempted to build solidarity where there is none. Now we have to fight a losing battle against our minds to keep it together. We’ve tried building a house upon sand, and become frustrated when the house (mental model) inevitably fails us. If you continue to cling to what you built, you will have to continually and perpetually defend yourself. It’s a constant struggle to keep it together.

Side note: Yo, so again, I might not agree with everything Singer says, but I can at least relate to what he mentions above. This is solid.

This is what it means to live spiritually: to choose not to participate in this struggle.

It means that the events that happen to you in the moment belong in the moment. They don’t belong to you. You permit things that break your mental model disturb you as an act to dynamically break it up and free yourself.

That which everyone else wants, you don’t want. That which everyone else resits, you totally accept.

Side note: This sentence is the one that will take the most time to get used to.

You want your model to break, and you honor the experience when when something happens that cause disturbance within you. If anything can cause disturbance inside of you, it means it hit your mental model. It means it hit the false part of you that you built in order to control your own definition of reality. But if that model is reality, why didn’t it fit the model?

There’s nothing you can make up inside your mind that can ever be considered reality.

The only way to inner freedom is through the one who watches the self.

The self simply notices that the mind and emotions are unraveling, and that nothing is struggling to hold them together.

Of course this will be painful, that’s why only 1% succeed. The reason you built the whole mental model was to avoid pain.

Be free from your self-made prison by simply watching the psyche be the psyche. The way out is through awareness.

When your mind is disturbed, don’t ask, “what do I do about this? What action do I take?”, ask “Who am I that notices this?”

In time, you will come to realize that the center from which you watch disturbance cannot get disturbed. If it appears disturbed, just notice who is noticing that disturbance. Eventually, it will stop. You will then be able to rest back into the depths of your being while watching your mind and heart create their last throes of turmoil.

Side note: The above paragraph makes sense.

If you want permanent peace, permanent joy, and permanent happiness, you have to get through the other side of the inner turmoil.

Your only way out is the witness. Just keep letting go by being aware that you are aware.

Side note: This seems like a trade off of life. Sure, you can get permanent peace and permanent joy, but don’t expect to be highly regarded by society, or leading a huge impact on the world via business, because this essentially trains you to not want those things. Whereas those types of business tycoons have instead trained themselves to become competent while retaining their desire for societal success.

If you pass through a period of darkness or depression, ask yourself, “Who is aware of the darkness?”

The end goal is this: you will no longer identify with anything outside the sense of Self.

Side note: I mean let’s be real: the only reason why I’m even reading this book is because Singer is a Billionaire, and by that definition, he is successful and highly regarded by society. Yet, if these are his words, and his true beliefs, he must not be attached to those successes the same way Marcus Arelius was not attatched to his material success. I think both of these people have achieved the bottom of their cups, so that they can accept being poured by others, but they have an inner depth from which, if and when the water stops pouring, they will be content and filled up

Chapter 15: The path of unconditional happiness

Summary

Billions of things could happen that you haven’t even thought of before. The real question is whether you want to be happy regardless of what happens, because happiness is a choice and events don’t determine whether or not you’re going to be happy. You’re not helping anyone by being miserable.

Notes

The highest spiritual path is life itself.

If you know how to live life daily, it all becomes a liberating experience.

According to Singer, we humans only have one choice to make in life: do we want to be happy or unhappy?

Once you make that choice, your path to life, according to Singer, becomes clear.

Side note: to be clear, Singer is emphasizing that fact that happiness is a choice we can make at any time, independent of what happens to us, which is something I agree with.

The choice to be happy is a simple one, but our deep-rooted set of preferences get in the way; if you’re starving, you don’t care what you eat as long as it’s food. Likewise, you can choose to be happy without any qualifiers.

The question we specifically get to answer is: “Do you want to be happy from this point forward for the rest of your life, regardless of what happens?”

If you answer yes, then that means you will choose to recognize that things happen FOR you rather than to you; if your wife leaves you, if you get fired from your job, if you go broke, you will still hold a positive attitude while taking the right actions.

You know what to do, and you know you’re going to do it, then your next question becomes, are you doing to do that thing while being happy or being upset? It’s your choice.

It means you choose to acknowledge that happiness is in your control.

Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is towards enlightenment; you just have to really mean it when you say that you choose to be happy. And you have to choose it regardless of what happens. This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure to awakening as could possibly exist.

Happiness is a simple choice. When everything is going well, it’s easy to be happy. But the moment something difficult happens, it’s not so easy.

Billions of things could happen that you haven’t even thought of before. The real question is whether you want to be happy regardless of what happens.

You’re not helping anyone by being miserable.

Events don’t determine whether or not you’re going to be happy

You can be happy just to have waken up this morning.

If you truly wish to be happy, you have to let go of the part of you that wants to create melodrama.

In the final analysis, enjoying life’s experiences is the only rational thing to do.

Every time a part of you begins to get unhappy, let it go. Use affirmations, or do whatever you need to do to stay open.

Side note: It’s important to note that Singer references affirmations. How are these different from the mental narratives or mental models we tell ourselves?

Chapter 16: The spiritual path of nonresistance

Summary

You truly can reach a state in which you never become any more stress, tension, or problems for the rest of your life. It starts by realizing that life is giving you a gift, and that gift is the flow of events that takes place between your birth and death. To handle this flow, your heart and mind must be open and expansive enough to encompass reality. The only reason they’re not is because you resist reality.

Notes

According to Singer, one should view their spiritual work as learning to live life without stress, problems, fear, or melodrama; this path of using life to evolve spiritually is truly the highest path.

There is no reason for tension or problems because stress only happens when you resist life’s events.

If you’re neither pushing life away, nor pulling it toward you, then you are not actively creating any resistance.

You are simply present.

Ask yourself this question: why are we so resistant to just letting life be life?

If you carefully look inside of yourself, you will see that it’s you, the Self, driven by willpower.

Will is a real force that emanates from your being. It’s what makes your arms and legs move. You use the same will to hold onto thoughts when you want to concentrate on them.

The power of Self, when it is concentrated and directed into the physical, mental, or emotional realms, creates a force called will. That’s what you use when you try to make things happen or not happen. You have the power (and the choice) to affect things.

When we resist an event that has already happen, we are actually resisting the event passing through us; we don’t want it affecting us inside.

The experience of an event does not stop with our sensory observation of it; the event has to pass through the psyche at an energetic level.

The initial observation touches our mental and emotional energy pools, creating movements in the energy; the assertion of willpower can stop the energy transfer, and that’s what creates tension.

Since the event has already passes, you are actually struggling with yourself, no the event.

In addition, think about how much energy is wasted resisting what might happen; since most of the things you think might happen never do, you are just throwing your energy away.

How you deal with your energy flow has a major effect on your life.

If you assert your will against the energy of an event that has already happened, it is like trying to stop the ripples caused by a leaf dropping into a still lake.

This is the human predicament. Events have happened and we continue to hold their energy inside of us by resisting them.

Now, when we face today’s events, we are neither prepared to receive them nor capable of digesting them; because we’re still struggling with past energies.

Overtime, the build up of blocked energies lead to burn-out.

But there is no reason to get stressed-out.

If you permit the energy to pass by you by letting go, then you can be as fresh every moment as you would be on a stress-free vacation.

The solution is simple: stop resisting

How do you do this? By first observing when resisting happens.

It’s clear that not all of us resist the same things or have the same issues. This is because we don’t have the same preconceived notions of how things should be or how they should matter to us (#7 certainty of life: individual subjectivity).

Impressions from past events may lead us to resist current events, thereby creating inner tension. But the truth is, the entire process has no real meaning; it simply is.

So here we are, stuck dealing with the current event with blocked energies from the past; you will not be coming from a place of clarity, but from a place of inner resistance and tension.

The solution is simple: Stop resisting by dealing with each situation with acceptance and relaxing into their being.

This process of relaxing acceptance through resistance is beneficial to everything in your life because it directly addresses how to keep your heart open when it’s trying to close. Deep inner release is a spiritual path in and of itself; it is the path of nonresistance, the path of acceptance, the path of surrender. The key is to just relax and release AND deal with what’s left in front of you. No need to worry about the rest.

Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance.

If an event takes place and is able to make it through your psyche, you will be left face-to-face with the actual situation as it truly exists. And, since you’re dealing with the actual event, rather than stored energies simulated by the event, you won’t assert reactive energy from your past.

Simply put: you will find yourself dealing with issues with greater ease.

It is actually possible to never have another problem again, for the rest of your life. Why? Because events are not problems; they’re just events–your resistance to them is what causes problems.

Side note: How does this compare with “The Way of the Superior Man” book, when it claims that the problems and challenges never end?

URGENT NOTE FROM SINGER: Don’t think that because you accept reality it means you don’t deal with things; you still do get to deal with them, but this time, it will be from a place of clarity, knowing that your next move will move you upwards towards transcendence, rather than dig you lower into deeper trouble.

You will be surprised to find that in most situations there’s nothing to deal with except for your own fears and desires.

Fear and desire making everything seem so complicated. If you don’t have fear nor desire about an event, there’s really nothing to deal with; you simply allow life to unfold and interact with it in a natural and rational manner.

When the next thing happens, you’re fully present in that moment and simply enjoy the experience of life.

When events of this world make it through you, you have reached a deep spiritual state; you may now be conscious in the presence of whatever takes place, without building up blocked energies. When you attain this state, everything becomes clear.

This is in contrast with what everybody else is attempting to deal with; they focus on the world around them while struggling with their own reactions and personal preferences.

When a person is dealing with their own fears, anxieties, and desire, how much energy is left for dealing with what’s actually happening?

Side note: this is actually what Adam Scott recommends: energy management

Stop and think about what you’re capable of achieving. Up to now, your capacities have been constrained by constant inner struggles. Imagine what would happen if your awareness was free only on the events actually taking place.

If you can bring this level of awareness and clarity to everything you do, your life would change.

So, as your path, you take on the work of using life to let go of your resistance.

Relationships are a great way to work with yourself. Imagine if you used relationships to get to know other people, rather than to satisfy what is blocked inside of you. The same is true of your daily work. The biggest mistake most people make is believing they are working for someone else (Earl Nightgale).

It’s all about letting go of the useful perceptions and narratives we tell ourselves that lead us to self-suffering while others seemingly enjoy life with that magic touch.

Chapter 17: Contemplating death

Summary

Death is guaranteed; it comes unannounced, at any time and any place. Death is what gives meaning to life and makes it precious. The fear of death is simply a call to enjoy you life by spending more time doing what you wish to do. In the final analysis, death is nothing to be feared, but something that frees us from life itself.

Notes

While someone could remind you of the insignificance of the things that you cling to, death takes them all away in a second.

A wise person realizes that at any moment, they may breath out their last breath.

Death comes unannounced, any time and any place.

When death comes one day and says, “It’s time to go”, you may respond, “what? now? I’m not ready”, to which death will respond with, “I’ve given you [insert you age] years, look at how much time I’ve given you, yet you still haven’t achieved what you wanted? Why”. And from this you may come to the realization, “I wasn’t paying attention…I didn’t think it mattered”.

The beauty of embracing deep truths is that you don’t have to change your life; you just change how you live your life. It’s not what you’re doing; it’s how much of you is doing it.

In regard to death, you’re probably not going to get a warning–very few people are told when they’re going to die. Almost everyone just takes a breath and doesn’t know they didn’t take another.

Since you know you’re going to die, be willing to say what needs to be said and do what needs to be done.

Learn to live as though you are facing death at all times, and you’ll become bolder and more open. When you live fully, you don’t have any last wishes.

The fear will fade once you understand that the only thing there is to get from life is the growth that comes from experiencing it.

Life itself is your career, and your interaction with life is your most meaningful relationship.

What actually gives life meaning is the willingness to live it; it’s not one big championship nor defining moment, but the small, iterative hour-to-hour courage to experience life’s events in the present moment.

When you’re told that death is around the corner something special happens: you change, but life stays the same.

If you challenged yourself to live as though it were your last week, your mind may come up with all kinds of suppressed desires. You may feel rushed to do complete all those desires. But that’s not the answer. Rather, that rush to complete the desires is your attempt to get special experiences from life that makes you miss the actual experience of life.

What do we mean by this?

Life is not something you get; it’s something you experience. Life exists with or without you. Life has been going on since that dawn of age; you simply experience this tiny sliver of it.

If you’re busy trying to get something, you’ll miss the tiny sliver that’s you’re actually experiencing.

Life is not something wasted.

Death is what makes life precious.

You fear death because you crave life; as if there’s something to get before your time’s up that you have yet to experience.

Many people feel that death will take something away from them. The wise person realizes that death is constantly giving them something. Death is giving meaning to your life; you’re the one who throws your life away from all the time you waste.

If you are living every experience fully, then death doesn’t take anything from you. There’s nothing to take because you’re already fulfilled. That’s why the wise being is always ready to die.

You really don’t need more time before death; what you need is more depth of experience during the time you’re given.

The wise realize that in the end, life belongs to death.

Death is the ultimate reality of life.

Chapter 18: The secrete of the middle way

Summary

Notes

Those who have truly learned the secretes of life recognize these truths without having to read anything.

The Tao can be found in the middle between two extremes. It’s the place on the pendulum where there is no energy pushing in either direction. Everything has a yin and yang.

The way is the place in which these forces balances quietly.

Singer claims that going between extremes wastes energy because the pendulum that’s on one far side will swing to the equal but opposite side. The Tao, on the other hand, is in the middle.

Side note: I wonder how this compares with the idea of “contrast” (contrastive learning) or Ecotones.

If you’re driving and somebody cuts you off, you feel your energy start to pull off-center; you actually feel it in your heart. As you let go, it comes back to center.

Side note: this is actually what happened to me a few hours ago. Some guy “skipped” my family and I in the line as we were waiting to be seated in an airport loughe (I add quotes because we (my family in I) were in the wrong for not reserving a spot first). I initially started getting upset by his remark and gesture, but then in an instant I told myself “Hurt people hurt people; he’s not wrong; this does not matter in the grand scheme of things”, and instantly I felt myself letting go of the negativity.

But remember that this middle way, or the Tao, is not a static equilibrium; it is a dynamic equilibrium where you move from one balance point to another. You don’t have any concepts nor preferences, but you let the forces move you.

Chapter 19: The loving eyes of God

Summary

The final journey is becoming one with God.

Notes

If you move your search for God down to the mental-intellectual level, somebody will dispute it; you can’t know God that way. It must come from actual experience. That’s what happens when you meditate. That’s what happens when you let go of your lower self.

All you have to do is notice the energy flow, and you will start to notice the tendency toward the qualities of the Divine.