I’ve run across a book that could change your life from the time you open to the first chapter to the moment you close the last. I want to tell you about it, because I believe that you will be very, very glad that I did.
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Friday is Book & Movie Day on the blog, when we take a look at texts and films – old and new — that I highly recommend you not miss. This week’s recommendation: The Untethered Soul, by Michael A. Singer
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Long have we heard that our thoughts have an enormous impact on our day-to-day lives. And this is not just a “new age” idea. As traditional a Christian minister as you could get wrote that extraordinary book The Power of Positive Thinking (Rev. Dr. Norman Vincent Peale). Now comes a text that discusses the role that our thoughts play in our moment-to-moment experience in a way that is so clear, so understandable, that no one who reads it can ever again say they don’t understand what people are talking about when they say: Your thoughts create your reality.
Its author, Michael A. Singer, was working toward his doctorate in economics in the 1970s when he had what he describes as a “deep inner awakening.” From that experience has emerged two books previous to this: The Search for Truth and Three Essays on Universal Law: Karma, Will and Love. The books seek to integrate Eastern and Western philosophy.
The book here recommended, The Untethered Soul, is a journey of exploration of “self.” It offers a fascinating, riveting discussion of the way the mind works, of the nature of thought and the role it plays in our lives, and of the nature of the THINKER of our thoughts…
“When you contemplate the nature of Self, you are meditating,” Singer writes. “That is why meditation in the highest state. It is the return to the root of your being, the simplest awareness of being aware. Once you become conscious of the consciousness itself, you attain a totally different state. You are now aware of who you are. You have become an awakened being. Its really just the most natural thing in the world. Here I am. Here I always was.
“It’s like you’ve been on the couch watching TV, but you were so totally immersed in the show that you forgot where you were. Someone shook you, and now you’re back to the awareness that you’re sitting on the couch watching TV. Nothing has changed. You’ve simply stopped projecting your sense of self on that particular object of consciousness. You woke up. That is spirituality. That is the nature of self. That is who you are.”
I found myself absorbed in this text from first word to last. Others have as well. Yogi Amrit Desai calls it “a priceless gift to all who have futilely searched and yearned for a richer, more meaningful, creative life.” He describes it as a “seminal book that is, quite frankly, in a class by itself.”
Yes, it is that in my opinion as well. Every thoughtful spiritual seeker will enjoy it. All, I believe, will benefit from it immensely. Singer here shows us how to work with our thoughts, how to step outside of our “story” that they create, and how to detach sufficiently from our drama to lead a peaceful, joyous life.
— NDW