When my brother was diagnosed with cancer, I found myself grappling with overwhelming emotions and an incessant stream of thoughts. It was during this tumultuous time that the book "The Untethered Soul" became my beacon of hope.
In this episode of the Mom On Purpose Book Club we touch upon the five key sections of the book—Awakening, Experiencing, Freeing, Going, and Living—each representing a step towards spiritual growth and inner peace.
We also tackle the idea of "inner thorns" that cause pain and block our energy. Using a powerful analogy, we'll explore how to face and remove these inner obstacles for true healing.
Join me and learn practical techniques to stay energized and motivated, even when negative past experiences threaten to drag you down.
What you'll learn:
Featured on the Show:
Click HERE to watch this video to learn The 3 Things to Avoid When Reading Self-Help Books
How to Connect with Lara:
Web: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/j.lara.johnson/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/larajohnsoncoaching
Work with Lara: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com/work-with-me/
When my brother was diagnosed with cancer, I found myself grappling with overwhelming emotions and an incessant stream of thoughts. It was during this tumultuous time that the book "The Untethered Soul" became my beacon of hope.
In this episode of the Mom On Purpose Book Club we touch upon the five key sections of the book—Awakening, Experiencing, Freeing, Going, and Living—each representing a step towards spiritual growth and inner peace.
We also tackle the idea of "inner thorns" that cause pain and block our energy. Using a powerful analogy, we'll explore how to face and remove these inner obstacles for true healing.
Join me and learn practical techniques to stay energized and motivated, even when negative past experiences threaten to drag you down.
What you'll learn:
Featured on the Show:
Click HERE to watch this video to learn The 3 Things to Avoid When Reading Self-Help Books
How to Connect with Lara:
Web: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com
Instagram: www.instagram.com/j.lara.johnson/
Facebook: www.facebook.com/larajohnsoncoaching
Work with Lara: www.larajohnsoncoaching.com/work-with-me/
Welcome to the Mom On Purpose podcast. I'm Lara Johnson and I'm here to teach you how to get out of your funk, be in a better mood, play more with your kids, manage your home better, get your to-do list done and live your life on purpose. With my proven method, this is possible for you, and I'll show you how. You're not alone anymore. We're in this together.
All right, welcome everybody to the Mom On Purpose Book Club. We are doing “The Untethered Soul” today. We were talking before we turned the recording on that.
It was very fascinating and sometimes it was very complicated. There's some books I feel like I can move through very quickly. This was not one of them. This was one that I felt like I had to read. Some think about it, try and piece it together, come back, read some more, which is kind of fun, you know, to go back and to read, and I was really appreciative that this book came at this time. You know I pick these books so far in advance, but I think God has a really beautiful, incredible way of bringing books into our lives at certain times and there's always lessons to be learned.
So, my younger brother he's 35, 36 years old, was diagnosed with cancer not too long ago. He just started chemo. It's going to be a very, very long process for him of chemo, radiation surgery, all kinds of things, and, as I've been contemplating that, that's kind of what I took into this book, especially because there was some activation from past a good friend that passed away eight years ago. He was the exact same age as my brother same age kids and so I've just kind of been watching all of this come up and it was so perfect to be able to read this book while all of this was happening in my mind and in my heart, because I felt like it gave me a different perspective as I went into this book. So, if there are things that are in your heart and on your mind, bring these into this book club today, because I do find that I found a lot of really beautiful answers as I was reading through this book.
So, the untethered soul I did not look him up the last couple of times. I haven't looked up the author. I do apologize for that, so I'll get better on that, but it is talking about ourselves, like who we are as individuals, but then also separate from us as our soul. So, the beginning of the book. He really talks about going into that voice inside of our head. Okay, so this is yourself. At times he calls this the psyche. So, we've got ourselves, we've got the psyche, we've got our soul. So, he kind of breaks.
Well, he breaks the book down into five sections and I really like just I'm going to read high level because then we're going to go into each of these sections, so the first one's awakening, then experiencing, the next one's freeing, the next one's going and the next one's living. So, I want you just to kind of think about those as we go through that. It's just a progression and that's why I really liked the words. Those aren't like he had phrases, but I wanted to just focus on those words so that you could see the progression, the awakening and then the experiencing. So, the first section where he talks about the awakening is where we're learning the most about ourselves and we're diving into who that person is and who we actually are. So, he says the first thing to really think about is the voice inside of our head. So I want you just to take a second and you can try this out for yourself is just kind of close your eyes If you're in a spot that you can and just say hello, just close your eyes, say hello so he continually brings this back to yourself is the one that's hearing that voice just kind of trippy to think about, so you can keep doing that. So, he mentions that at some point in the book where he's like, if you ever don't feel like you're in that consciousness, just go back and say hello and hello and tell, and then start getting louder and yell it louder and you're going to start hearing it echo. You are the person; you are the consciousness that is hearing the hello. You are yourself is the one saying it. So, he kind of breaks this down also, and that's the other thing I wanted to mention.
So, he talks about how the conscious part of us, the thing that gives us life, that's the thing that's hearing, the voice that is speaking inside of our head and that voice never stops talking. It was interesting. As I was reading this I was thinking, okay, I don't think I have that voice anymore. I know it used to be really loud, but I don't think I really have it. It's not as negative as it once was. So, it was like I assumed it left. So, over the last couple of days, I've really tried to be quieter and try to listen to what that voice is saying and trust me, it's still there. It's saying plenty. I had just forgotten to separate the conscious, you know, from that voice. We are not that voice, and we are the one that hears that voice. We are not our thoughts. The self is the one that's creating those thoughts and those emotions. We are deeper than that. So, when he goes and starts talking about this, this is very important to understand, as he's talking about these as two separate beings, because this is how we really start focusing on who we are. And so, he goes in.
He said it's important to remember that this voice never stops talking, ever. It takes a lot of deep meditation, you know, when people are really talking about spiritual awakenings. Meditation, it's learning how to be okay with this voice and not buying into the voice or believing whatever the voice is saying, and learning how to quiet it a little bit. But it won't ever stop. And the reason why it won't stop is because this psyche that we have is going through and narrating the world through a very particular set of lenses, like a very particular lens. So, this is actually narrating the world for you.
This narration makes you feel more comfortable with the world around you. So, when you're looking at everything that's happening, everything is continually changing. And he says the reason why this voice never stops talking is the same reason a tea kettle whistle. There's this buildup of energy that needs to be released. Sometimes this energy is nervousness, fearfulness, desire-based energy. So, your voice becomes very active because it's releasing that energy through this narration of the world. So, you're constantly looking at the world and it's narrating.
Now, if you think about this, if you just stop for a second and look at every item in your room, there's a lot of stuff. If your brain was to take in everything and used every one of those objects as part of your narration, you would never get anywhere. It would be completely overwhelming. So, it's not necessarily that this narration is a bad thing. It is actually what helps us move through the world and it's processing things at a very quick speed so we can continue to move. But the whole point of this is for protection. It is to keep us safe.
This is the way your psyche yourself has been programmed, in order to always avoid some kind of negative experience. So, he says this inner world is an alternate environment that is under your control. You're thinking about thoughts that you want in your mind and you're expressing your voice through the mind he says there is a myriad of things that you see at any given moment, yet you only narrate a few of them. The ones you discuss in your mind are the ones that matter to you. With this subtle form of pre-processing, you manage to control the experience of reality, so it all fits together in your mind. Your consciousness is actually experiencing the mental model of reality, not reality itself. So, when you think about this okay, there's all these different things over here and your brain only picks a few of them to actually process. From that point, it then provides an alternate reality for your consciousness.
Now, when this is where, like you, really get into a lot of psychology, a lot of philosophy, that's going on. What I liked what he said in the very beginning, is that it's most important to learn this not by learning from other philosophers, but to think about your direct experience with this. You recreate this outside world inside of yourself, and then that's where you live inside of your mind. So, a really good example of this is if you've ever been in a situation where there are two people and you're both experiencing the same outside thing and then suddenly you come back and you talk about it and you have very different perspectives on what happened.
This happened to me a long time ago with a very close friend. We hadn't seen each other for a while. When we did see each other, I was ecstatic to see her, and it was like a very joyful experience. Later on, she and I began talking and she expressed a lot of frustration about how awkward that experience was and how she felt like we had moved apart. It was very confusing to my brain, because my brain lived a very different reality of that moment and, because of the lens that we had, it created a very different reality for each of our consciousness. One was not right or the other, it just was based on the way that we think.
So, he goes on to say that you know, it's not necessarily a problem, but it can become a problem. So when you start to see that all of this is happening in your brain and suddenly your whole life is built around protecting yourself, suddenly your whole life is built around protecting yourself, that's where all your energy goes towards, and at this point he says that you've become a very disturbed person and he talks about this disturbance, this disturbance of energy, this disturbance of our consciousness, this disturbed person. So, he said, one of the best ways to like, really see and separate yourself is to personify this self as something separate from you. Okay, so this is where, like, the shift starts to happen to almost where the soul starts to happen, to almost where the soul who you truly are, the person that hears the voice, is kind of front and center and you personify the self as something outside of you. Okay, so it's almost like a shift in perspective. So now this person is who you want to take the stage, but things are still passing through this voice.
So, he says, since this voice right here never stops talking and it's always looking at the world around, he says, if somehow the voice managed to manifest in a body outside of you and you had to take it everywhere you went, you wouldn't last a day. If somebody were to ask you what your new friend is like, you'd say this is one seriously disturbed person. Just look at the neurosis and dictionary and you get this picture because they never stop talking, they never do, and they're always making this huge, melodramatic experience out of nothing and they're always trying to take something enjoyable and trying to look for what could go wrong. And it almost starts to feel like this thing can start to control us if we allow it. But we want to keep this outside of us. Okay, if we allow it, but we want to keep this outside of us, okay. So, he said at this point, when we're really looking at who are we and I like the way he outlined this he says so if somebody comes up and says who are you, you say okay, so my name is Sally Smith. And the response would be okay, so you're a collection of letters. And the person responds okay, no, no, no, I'm not Sally Smith, that's just the name people call me. It's a label. Really, I'm Frank Smith's wife and I do like that. He says it's not politically correct nowadays that you could only be someone's wife. But then he goes on to say so did you not exist before you got married? Do you cease to exist after you? If he passes away, he says okay, my label is Sally Smith.
I was born in 1965 in New York. I live in Queens, and then it lists a whole bunch of things. I was in the fifth-grade play, Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz. I started dating in the ninth grade. That's who I am. So, it goes through the story. And then he goes on to say, like that's a fascinating story, but I didn't ask what happened to you since you were born. I asked who are you? What you just described; all these are all experiences. Would you still be here if you hadn't gone through those exact experiences? Okay? So yes, we would still be here, says okay, let's go a little deeper. Okay, I'm a body that's occupying the space. I'm five foot six and I weigh 135 pounds. And here I am.
So, then he goes on to question it again. You see how, like this can get very confusing as you're reading it. But at the same time, I want you to really think about this for yourself. But at the same time, like I want you to really think about this for yourself Were you in existence before you were five foot six? Were you a person before you were in that play? So really start to see that this right here, this person that's experiencing things, you existed even before you experienced those things. So, who are you?
So, it goes on to say that you are not the objects you look at you are not the things you are experiencing. You are the one who is inside looking at that world, and it's not that you have to. It says that you know that you're there, you don't have to think about it, you just know it. You can't put it into words, you just feel it, it just is Every person. That's who you are. So, all of our brains at this point want to start creating what he calls the subject-object relationship. So, this is like with the outside world we take these objects and we become the subject of them, but that's not who we are. Same thing with like, okay, imagine these were all thoughts or these were all emotions. Okay, that's not who we are. Now this subject, this psyche, this self is experiencing those thoughts and emotions, but we are not our thoughts, we are not our emotions, we are the consciousness that is watching those emotions happen in a human body. It's very deep. You stay with me.
So, at this point, that's where it's really important to start to see that we can look at ourselves from what he calls our lucid self. So have you ever had that experience where, so he uses in the book where you're kind of in that dream state, but you know that you're dreaming. You're kind of watching what you're doing in the dream, knowing that you are separate from that dream. That's essentially what we're all walking around with. It's really cool when I'm on a call with a client where they're experiencing a lot of emotions and we say, okay, let's just pause for a second. Let's just, you know, drop into our body, let's see what's happening. Okay, suddenly it separates very easily. Now. Suddenly they are consciousness looking at those emotions outside of them.
Another way to think about this is this is I find with a lot of moms I've had this experience before as well where all of a sudden, right before your period, you are raging at everyone and it's like this out of body experience where you can see your body and you're like yelling and you're crabby and you're like mad that there's stuff everywhere and it's like you're watching yourself on, like what are you so mad about? And then you start your period the next day. You're like, oh, that's what it was Okay. But we all have those like out of body moments where we're watching ourselves experiencing life and it's kind of like it's very much an out-of-body experience. He said that's what he describes as like the lucid self where your consciousness is seeing your human body, experience the world, the outside world, the thoughts, the emotions in your brain and body. Okay, so that's kind of our introduction to all of this. Okay, that's the awakening, that's what we want to separate and see that we are not this psyche, we are not this self, we are actually the consciousness, the soul that gives this self-life. So, at this point he then starts to talk about it. This is where he says experiencing, I'll find the actual word, I just liked the word experiencing, experiencing energy. So, the first I think was experiencing, so awakening consciousness. Okay, the next part is experiencing energy.
Let's start with an example. Have you ever had this experience where you feel like you have no motivation to clean your house and you're just kind of sitting around? And it's one of those days where you just feel lethargic and suddenly you have, you know, maybe it's your mother-in-law, maybe it's a friend, maybe it's a neighbor says hey, I need to borrow this thing, I'm coming over in 10 minutes. Or hey, I'm in the area, I'd like to stop and drop by and see you. And suddenly you have this burst of energy, just like that, where you jump up and you clean your entire house, like so fast and you get showered and you put makeup on and suddenly what feels like you know, maybe like five minutes, you were able to get done a whole day's worth of work. Have you ever had that experience?
Okay, so that's what he's talking about here is that there is this source of energy, this infinite source of energy that we can all draw upon inside of us and we all tap into it like that experience, like we all tap into it at times. But there are times where this energy is actually blocked within our heart. This energy is actually blocked within our heart. So, when we're talking about this and he references a lot of yoga terms you've got chi, you've got chakras. When you're looking at judo, Christianity, like there's all of this comes back to the soul. But depending on you know which different spiritual ways of communicating we'll just say that there will be a different word. You know which different spiritual ways of communicating? We'll just say that there will be a different word. You know, for some people it's soul, spirit, the chi. You know all of those things.
So, he says at this point, when we're tapping into this energy, this is the energy that's available to us at any moment. We can always draw on it. But if you don't feel this energy at all times, it's because you've blocked it. You've blocked it by closing your heart, by closing your mind and pulling yourself into a restrictive space. This closes you off from all the energy. When you close your heart, or you close your mind or your heart, or you hide in the darkness within, there is no light, there is no energy, there's nothing flowing. The energy is still there, but it can't get in. So, then he goes on to explain okay, but what does it mean to be blocked? If this is what I mean, of course we all want to tap into this incredible energy. Why would we not? What is blocking us? So, he said, when we get to this part, it's important to understand that there are channels, there are centers within us that allow energy to flow. Okay, so the first one would be our heart. So anytime we have some kind of blocked energy, there is something happening with our heart that does not allow it to come in. Our heart can either be open or it can be closed. What I like is that he says.
He says yoga is called the Shaki. In the West it's called the spirit. Call it anything you want. All the great spiritual traditions talk about your spiritual energy. People just give it different names. He says you need to know about this energy because it's yours, it's your birthright and it's unlimited. For some reason, like hearing that, like it's your birthright, it's unlimited, really, it was very profound for me and it made me realize that this is one of the most critical things that we can learn in our life, because if we want to achieve our purpose, if we want to do the thing that we're here on this earth to do, we need that energy and that's how we are connecting with God. So, to know that this is our birthright, to have this energy and to understand it, it really impressed upon me that I wanted to spend time really diving into this. This is the part where I had to, like, step away for a little, come back.
He goes on to say that this energy never gets old, it never gets tired, it doesn't need food. What it needs is openness and receptivity. This energy is equally available to everyone. When you close, the energy stops flowing. When you open, all the energy rushes inside of you. It says how much enthusiasm do you want to have for the things you do. If enjoying a full life means experiencing high energy, love and enthusiasm all the time, then don't ever close. So, this is where he really dives into the exercise of opening and closing.
Now he talks about this in very direct terms. I guess you could say so, meaning if you don't want to be blocked, then just stay open. And I found myself very often being like, but how do you stay open? Like, how do you do it? And he just kept saying it over and over and over again in the book. So, I wanted to spend time really looking how we can stay open or closed so that we can allow this energy to flow into us. So, he goes on to say and I'll come back to this he goes on to say if we've ever had so, we're programmed to be open or closed based on our past experiences from different events.
If they were negative experiences, they've left negative impressions, we tend to close. If they're positive impressions, we tend to open. He goes on to say but you should never leave something as important as your energy flow to chance. Anytime you start to close, ask yourself whether you really want to cut off the energy flow. Just make a commitment to explore the capacity for receiving unlimited energy. You simply decide not to close.
That's the part where I was like, but how, how do you just decide? So, I want you just for a second to take your hands, okay, and you can like grasp them like really hard. Okay, now I want you to hold it there just for a second. Okay, now I have decided to open them. Okay, the second you decide to open them, they open. It's that simple. So, as I've been practicing the last couple of days, like you know, you can feel your hands are kind of tense at first and they want to open kind of slowly, but then if we close them back up, then it'll kind of be stiff again and then we'd want to close. But the more we go back to that open, the more comfortable it becomes to keep our hands open, and we want to stay there and only sometimes we close, but then we choose to go back and open.
So, as I've been thinking about that that's kind of what helped me as we continue talking about this flow of energy and being blocked is being able to use that consciousness, being able to use our soul to invite our body to open. Just like our hands can open when we ask them to, our heart can as well. So, we're going to stay there. So just remember, keep that in mind. Okay, we can invite our heart to open, and it will open when we ask it to. It just takes a lot of practice. So, he goes on to say closing is a habit and, just like any other habit, you have to practice opening it.
He goes on to say that when we become blocked, this energy, this unlimited energy that the universe has available to us, it's our birthright. We have a whole bunch of past experiences that are stuck in our body and haven't been processed thoroughly. I would like just mentioning that, because this next month we're doing this book called Burnout the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, which talks very much about this. If you've ever read the book, the body keeps score. It's the same kind of thing. When you have negative impressions, when you have past experiences, even trauma or even just hard things that have happened, then your body has the ability to hold onto it and store it within. So, what he's talking about is, over time, all of these things have been stored within your heart and then it becomes a very different experience when you're blocked. It's not just a one-time thing, it's having to slowly release all of these things over and over. So, you have to keep opening.
Now, as these things he calls them disturbances come up. These are like all the past things that your body has stored. When these are like in you, you'll be experiencing life and there will be some kind of disturbance or something that activates this energy, this blocked energy inside of you, and you'll feel it. Some people call it a trigger, call it an activation, like suddenly your body goes into this heightened mode over nothing.
So, he uses the example of at one point you thought you saw your girlfriend in her blue Mustang. You know he's talking. He uses the example girlfriend for you and my boyfriend. Okay. So, you see this. You know loved one in a car you're hugging, and it created this impression that they were with someone else, even though there was no evidence. You don't even know if it was her. You just happened to pass by and see it. Well, years later, like, you're no longer with that person, you're happily married. You just happened to drive by this blue Mustang. You see these people hugging and immediately that memory is released, and you can see it. And all of a sudden you are gone back how many years? And you are in that exact same situation and now it has all consumed you. So, when we get to this point, you know these impressions. They continue to spin on themselves over and over in our body and sometimes they're activated.
Now there's two things that will happen because remember, we have our psyche, this self that has been designed to protect us. That's its main goal, he said. The first thing is that you can allow this to pass through, okay, or you can cling to it. For the most part, you're either trying to push these energies away because they're bothering you and you're not letting them pass through Okay. So, he says, at this point, you're wasting your energy by clinging to it or resisting it instead of allowing it to just pass through your body. He says the heart is the place through which energy flows to sustain you. This energy inspires you and raises you. It is the strength that you carry through your life. The highest state you will ever experience is simply the result of how open you were.
Now, if old energies come back up because you were unable to process them before, let them go now. So again, he's very, just, simple Just let it go, you're like, but how? Again, I want you to go back to thinking about your hands when that activation comes up, when those disturbances come up and you can feel yourself like, you'll feel your body starting to protect you and you'll start like closing off. Just remember, allow yourself, ask your heart to open back up, to take a deep breath and allow it to open back up. It'll feel hard at first, but just keep opening, keep opening, keep going back, just like you would with your hands. He says, of course it hurts when it comes up, this disturbance. It was stored with pain. It's going to release with pain. You have to decide, just like when you first open your hands. Your hands are a little painful. Okay, you're releasing with pain. You have to decide if you want to continue to walk around with stored pain blocked in your heart and limiting your life. The alternative is being willing to let it go. When it gets stimulated, it only hurts for a minute and then it's over.
And then he goes on to say you don't have to take every single one of these things over and over, like that would take a lifetime. All of us have these stored things that we've never been taught. You know what to do with it, he said. But your heart becomes getting accustomed to the releasing and cleansing you don't have to take them one by one, you just have to let that natural flow of energy come through and start purging these patterns. So, the more you stay open, the more you invite yourself to stay open, the more the energy flows and just starts moving through you and purging all of those old things. He says that way it's no longer like a valve that starts and stops. It just becomes like this release of energy that goes through and you're constantly like releasing it back out. It goes on to say if you relax and release, the purification of your heart is a wonderful thing. I just really liked the way he worded that. This purification of our heart, which is what's happening in our soul and our consciousness. It's like all this flow of energy that we're able to continually release back out, that we're able to continually release back out.
Okay, so then he goes on to say that everything in life is there to help stimulate this growth. And I'll be honest, I want to resist that every time because it doesn't always feel good. Life is surrounding you with people and situations that stimulate growth. You don't have to decide who's right or wrong. You don't have to worry about other people's issues. You only have to be willing to open your heart in the face of anything and everything and permit the purification process to take place. When you do this, the first thing you'll see is that situations will unfold that hit your stuff meaning like your blocks. This is your opportunity to let go. It is simply allowing that pain, like permitting that pain to come up and to pass through you, and it will keep happening, because that is life. Life is stimulating growth, allowing us to go through that process. That is spiritual evolution. Right, like that is what we're constantly returning back to faith, returning back to God. That is that purification of our hearts at all times.
So, and one of the things that he said is that you know, going back to that open and closed, he says, anytime you close, that's like turning to darkness. And again, it's our body's natural reaction to want to close because it wants to protect us. In its mind, that's what it thinks it's doing is by closing we create this fortress, and we'll talk about that more in a second. But now he said it, once you start protecting yourself and you're in this place, you're turning towards darkness, and darkness can never dispel darkness. The only thing that can dispel darkness is turning to light and that's the openness you know if you are a Christian I am a Christian it's turning back to Christ, being able to turn to light and staying open, allowing that healing power of Christ's atonement to come into my life. He says it's okay to still in this self to feel and process things, but you are the watcher of the human processing things. You are still going through and allowing things to pass throughout your body. Things will still be painful, and that consciousness is what will keep it open and allow that to happen. It's very deep. Again, I told you this is a deep book, okay.
So, he goes on to talk about, at this point, the thorn removing your inner thorn. So, he goes on to share this analogy, you know, again talking about this open and closed, blocked energy being able to pass through things. He goes on to talk about how we all have this thorn. Imagine for a minute that you have this thorn in your arm and any time that it's briefly touched it is so painful. So, you create all kinds of contraptions and devices so that you can simply live a normal, quote unquote normal life while this thorn is still protected. Quote, unquote. Normal life while this thorn is still protected.
He said at this point, your whole life has turned into protecting yourself from the problem instead of removing the problem. And then you become so fixated on this problem that you think you've solved it, when in reality, you've just molded your life around this problem. And then it starts to run your entire life. He says it affects all your decisions, including where you go, whom you're comfortable with and who's comfortable with you. It determines where you're allowed to work, what house you can live in, what kind of bed you can sleep in at night. When it's all said and done, that thorn is running every aspect of your life. So, he goes on to say that it's what you can do instead of having to use yourself. Again. Yourself was protecting from that thorn, whatever that blocked thing is that's in your heart. Yourself has protected you. It has created a life. Okay, now the other option is to remove the thorn and to free yourself from that.
So, I'll share a personal example, as I've been thinking about this one, like how can we actually you know process this? How can we remove this? So, what I started to think about was you know, I had trauma in my childhood there. I was abused by an uncle and that created this thorn in my life. As I went throughout my life, I had built a lot of protections around myself. I was very specific about who I dated. I was very specific around who came into my personal space bubble. Even now, like, I have to be very careful because if someone comes into my bubble my natural reaction is to like jolt, just because I had, for the longest time I had such a distinct bubble that people were not allowed to come in.
It was like I had built these devices. My entire life was built around this thorn. Now it got to a point where I really started to recognize it. Once I had children, because I had these devices built. I wanted to make sure that now I was bringing my children into these devices and that they were protected also from my problem as well. And then I started to realize that's not a way to live life. That's not a way for my children to live life. I had to remove the thorn. That was a very beautiful, a very difficult process, but being able to remove that thorn is what allowed me to heal and stay much more open. I can still feel, when I close, like when something activates it and I'll close up and I consciously have to go back to, you know, opening it up.
So, he goes on to describe this also as like he talks about, like our fortress talks about this in a different section, but I think it fits here with the closing, where we start building these walls as part of our closing, as a way to protect ourselves. But he said, your fortress actually becomes a prison. Which is exactly what I experienced in my life was that I couldn't, and my children couldn't, fully experience life because I had kept them in my fortress, I had required all of us to close off in order to keep them safe. When, in reality, we weren't able to experience life, I was blocking the joy and a lot of the freedom and experiences that life had to give and to offer us. So, then I had to really work on passing through instead of clinging to all of these things.
So that's what he goes on to talk about is when we experience pain. Pain is not necessarily a bad thing. Pain is freedom for our soul. It's the way that our body can communicate, and our consciousness can communicate. He says, when we really look at it, there is a very little things that we have control over in our life, which is so true, which is again why our brain picks and chooses and makes this pretty control thing inside of our brain, so that we feel like we're in control when in reality we're not at all. Our brain so that we feel like we're in control when in reality we're not at all. Which is why, when something happens outside of this perfect little model we've created in our mind, it can be so disruptive because we don't have control over it.
He said by watching your mind, you will notice that it is engaged in trying to make everything okay. It says consciously remember that this is not what you want to do and then gently disengage with it. Do not fight it. Do not ever fight with your mind. You will never win. It will either beat you now or you will suppress it and it will come back later and beat you later. Instead of fighting with your mind, just don't participate in it. So, when I was thinking about things like, how does that actually work for us? I was thinking about how often that actually work for us. I was thinking about how often well, I don't know if you've ever experienced this with my kids. I do it all the time and I've heard my friends do it too.
We're like don't engage in the pestering. Like if a sibling is pestering, you walk away, like don't engage. That's when the fight starts. I remember my parents telling me the same thing and it was so hard not to engage. If they're bugging you, you want to start picking back at them. It's the exact same thing with our mind is we have to be the quote unquote bigger person and not engage with the pestering. When our mind, when we want to like start fighting with our mind and you can feel it, you just have to walk away from it. The key is to be quiet. It's not that your mind has to be quiet, you have to be quiet Again, your consciousness, like your soul, has to be quiet. You don't go and fight with your mind when it's just trying to protect you. You just have to let it do its thing watching very high level over what's happening, thinking it and even saying okay, like I see what you're doing here, and I disagree, okay. So that's where he really goes on. He says this is where you move to a more centered consciousness. This is where all of the energy start to flow towards you. So, I'll mention just two more things with all of this.
When he talks about the untethered soul and what that means. So remember that we've got our self, okay, we've got our psyche. And I don't know if you ever had these things in your playground, but this is what I always think of. When I think of tethered, I think of tether ball. So, there's these poles that we have and there's like this long chain and at the end you have a ball, and the goal was, as a person, to hit that ball, so it spins around and around that chain. So, he goes on to say that in order to become untethered, well, in order to go beyond the everyday life that we have, the frustrations, the pain, and actually move beyond that, we have to become untethered. So, when we're looking at this right here, this pole, right here in this chain, this is our self, this is our psyche, this is our emotions, our thoughts, it's the outside world, all of these things that are out here, and this right here is our soul. When we remove this right here, we have the ability to go beyond just our human body and to experience a much more. This is what he says.
People overly use the phrase, but it's what it is like enlightenment, where you start to transcend the human experiences and connect with the divine. Now the last like section of the book that he talks about. When it comes to like connecting with the divine, he says it's very easy for us to build this model of what we think life should be. And if something doesn't happen within this perfectly you know constructed model, then it becomes very painful. We have those blocks again, he says. But true happiness really comes like the closer you are to God, and you make that choice to be happy regardless of what happens in life. That's really hard to do.
So, he goes on to talk about how, learning how to accept all the things that happen. But he essentially says acceptance is just learning to allow things to pass through you. And I really appreciated that because I remember having a hard time quote unquote accepting abuse because it shouldn't happen. I didn't want it to happen. That wasn't what I and I felt like if I accepted it, then it meant I was okay with it. That was the thing that my psyche had created the thought in order to keep me safe. So, I kept resisting it, resisting it because then I thought I could stop it from happening again, you know, to my children. So, in this situation, when I finally came to accept it. What I was doing was allowing it to pass through as part of my story. It was, it was lessons that I learned that shaped me to who I am today. I still disagree. Things like that should never happen and I can take away gifts and lessons from that experience. That's where I stopped resisting it so much.
So, it goes on to say that, like you have the choice to be happy, and when you really allow yourself to not hold on to things, not resist things, allow things to pass through you, you can find happiness in anything that you do. He goes on to say to remember that God is like the sun. So, he goes on to say you know, God is very loving. When you are able to see just beauty and love, it is like you're looking at your life through the eyes of God, which I thought was a really beautiful visual. And he says when the hand of God reaches out to give through you, there's nothing you wouldn't give. Like he taught us to be completely selfless and have compassionate love. When the hand of God reaches out to give through you, there's nothing you wouldn't give, like he taught us to be completely selfless and have compassionate love.
He said you can turn your eyes from the sun's light and live in darkness for a hundred years. If you then turn your eyes toward the light, the light is still there. And then he goes on to say, like there's no force of nature that differentiates all forces of nature give to us equally. Nature just gives and gives to whoever will receive, talking about like the fruit of the tree or you know anything. He says your relationship with God is the same as your relationship with the sun. If you hid from the sun for years and then chose to come out of your darkness, the sun would still be shining, as if you had never left.
You don't need to apologize; you just pick up your head and look at the sun. It's the same way. When you decide to turn toward God, you just do it. You don't need to allow guilt or shame to interfere. You can't offend the divine one. The divine one's very nature is light, love, compassion, protection and giving. So, he goes on to say and when you begin to feel this joy, that's when you'll know God's true nature. You will feel love instead of shame and instead of being unwilling to lift your eyes to the divine because of what you've said or done, you'll see the divine as a place of unconditional refuge. So, as we are talking and finishing up, you know thinking about ourselves, there is nothing that the self can do that will remove us forever from the divine force of God. We, at any time, just like the sun, can turn back to that light, just like we can turn back to God. That is where we feel the greatest amount of joy, the greatest amount of love. Regardless of what happens in our life, we can continually tap into that unlimited energy source and feel of that compassion and love at all times. So, there you have it. That is The Untethered Soul, a very wonderful, very deep book. I hope you enjoyed it Again.
Next month is Burnout the Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle, and that's going to be a fun one. Be still and know that I am God. Yes, that is a beautiful way to really wrap up what this whole thing is. What the whole book is about is to learning how, to learning how to be still with God. So have a wonderful week. It was great to see you. See you next time.
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