The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

Fluffy

The Untethered Soul is a mindset shift disguised as a spiritual manual. It’s less about chasing achievement and more about watching your thoughts without letting them run the show. For someone like me—wired to build systems, solve problems, and keep momentum—this book feels like an intentional pause. Michael Singer doesn’t sell you some grand secret; he just gently reminds you that the voice in your head isn’t you, and that freedom starts the moment you stop identifying with it. It’s not productivity advice, but it’s the foundation beneath all sustainable growth—inner calm that doesn’t rely on outcomes. Think of it as mental decluttering for someone who likes clean dashboards.

There's definitely a lot to learn here but there's also plenty of hot takes I don't necessarily agree with.... Still, it was overall pretty insightful and I'll take what I consider helpful with me for a long time.

Some parts are very good, some parts are - I will just say less good. But on the whole it was a very soothing read. The first 2 or so chapters, and the last chapter are the ones that stuck the most with me.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! The audiobook uses exceptionally clear language and relatable examples to convey profound ideas. While there was notable overlap with Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament, I found this to be a positive aspect. Hearing the same concepts explained in a slightly different way deepened my understanding. Overall, it was an incredibly enjoyable listen, and the insights it offers have been immensely valuable in my life. Highly recommended!

This was a book club read, and though at first I wasn't sure what to expect, I ended up finding it very thought-provoking and useful. At times I found the explanations to be repetitive, but that's just me. On the whole it was extremely relatable and accessible. Worth reading for anyone who wants to slow down and release some pent-up anxiety and stress-inducing habits!

Refreshing reminder to not take life so seriously.

Easy, conversational read. Refreshed is the best word I can use to describe how this book makes me feel. .

Need to go back and listen to this one again. It's one of those books where you know you missed a lot the first time, and there is so much more to digest!

Nothing revelatory for me, but good reminders, and I'm thinking about referring it to some clients. I read the audiobook version and the reader's “It's so easy” tone was both amusing but also a little off-putting, and I wonder if I would have taken the material more seriously in text form.

I really wanted to love this book, and it is possible that I read it at exactly the wrong time in the year/in my life, but I just felt like I was being told over and over again: you're doing it wrong. Just let go; get behind yourself, go higher–I think I know what Singer means here but repeating it isn't quite the same as showing or demonstrating it. I wanted a bit more “a ha” in the book and less “here we go again.”
As part of a spiritual quest, I can see a lot of value here. But as a practical primer on meditation and letting go–on Buddhism for people who don't want to talk about Buddhism, actually–it is pretty thin on the ground.
What I ended up really appreciating, though, was how he explained the durable self–the soul or spirit or whathaveyou–that is always present and watching what is going on. His explanation there provided an answer to that philosophical question I started having when I was about 9 years old.

The idea that I like the most from Eastern style thought is that resisting the way things are is crazy. There's a voice in my, and probably everyone else's, head that never shuts up. I'm fine with that and don't feel a huge need to silence it, but a lot of the time what it's saying (what I'm saying to myself?) is pretty dumb.

The voice constantly explains and reframes what I experience to make it feel safer or more comprehensible. It resists what it doesn't understand and tries to explain it away or come up with elaborate justifications for why stuff doesn't fit in with The Way Things Should Be. It demands resolution to anything that doesn't fit my mental model and it creates areas in my mind that are forbidden or painful to visit then tries to push those areas away so they'll be uncovered as seldom as possible.

All these elaborate thought tricks work sometimes, but the idea of The Untethered Soul (and similar books) is that the tricks are unnecessary and detrimental to finding peace. Maybe if I let the voice inside my head keep up its constant chatter, but choose to just recognize what it's saying without either rejecting it or mentally canonizing it, I can be okay with what's happening even without understanding and categorizing every bit of it.

I feel like that way of looking at my thoughts lets me experience both negative emotions like anger and hate as well as positive emotions in a way that doesn't have side effects like anxiety or attachment. It keeps me focused on what I'm doing which results in me doing things better. It helps me deal with situations that I don't like by freeing up mental energy that would normally be spent resisting the problem and letting me instead use that energy to resolve it.

Even though I like the idea, I still mostly don't think this way. I tell and re-tell myself the story of how things are and why they're that way and how I'm going to fix them later and forget where I am and what I'm doing. That's why I read books like this, to remind me that there is a better way.