Notes on 'The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself'
Here are some highlights and notes from my reading of The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself.
Chapter 15: The Path of Unconditional Happiness
The highest spiritual path is life itself. If you know how to live daily life, it all becomes a liberating experience. But first you have to approach life properly, or it can be very confusing. You have to realize that you really only have one choice in this life, and it’s not about your career, whom you want to marry, or whether you want to seek God. People tend to burden themselves with so many choices. But, in the end, you can throw it all away and just make one basic, underlying decision: Do you want to be happy, or do you not want to be happy? It’s really that simple. Once you make that choice, your path through life becomes totally clear.
Chapter 17: Contemplating Death
It is truly a great cosmic paradox that one of the best teachers in all of life turns out to be death. No person or situation could ever teach you as much as death has to teach you. While someone could tell you that you are not your body, death shows you. While someone could remind you that the things you hold on to are so transient, death takes them all away in a second. While people can teach you that men and women of all races are equal and that there is no difference between the rich and the poor, death instantly makes us all the same.
Chapter 18: The Secret of the Middle Way
The Tao is in the middle because that is the place where the energies are balanced. But how do you stop the pendulum from swinging to the outer edges? Surprisingly, you just leave it alone. The pendulum will not swing to the extreme unless you feed it the energy to do so. If you don’t leave it alone, if you don’t participate, the pendulum naturally swings back to the middle. When the pendulum swings back to the middle, you will be full of energy. This is because all the energy that was being wasted is now available to you.
Note: Tao, The Golden Mean