The Untethered Soul and Energetic Inquiry
Where’s the Lettuce?
It was 2016 and I had just finished reading Michael Singer’s book, The Untethered Soul. I was mesmerized. It was full of information that was new to me, and I wanted to understand it all. After reading through the book the first time, I kept it perched on my nightstand like a little treasure chest. Every now and then I opened it and re-read its pages.
I had read a lot of self-help books over the years and had grown weary of a common theme found in many. The theme being that I can have everything I want in life if I just change my thoughts. These books were promoting positive thinking as a way of attracting to yourself the things you desire. While I would love to have all the things I desire, I could not figure out how to change my thoughts appropriately. Worse than that, my attempts to do so often felt like a betrayal of my true feelings.
The Untethered Soul was different. Michael Singer said, “You will not be able to solve anything outside until you know how the situation affects you inside.” And, instead of changing my thoughts which seemed to be a hopeless endeavor, he was telling me to just sit back and watch my thoughts (which he also referred to as “the voice inside your head”).
This made a lot of sense to me, and it was practical. It was something I could do. And so, I began watching.
Coinciding with the reading of this book was a time of strife in my marriage. My husband and I had had disagreements before but the arguing during this period was more acute. We seemed to be bickering about anything and everything. I noticed the feeling of tightening & constriction in my body more often and realized that these physical sensations were a signal that I was being triggered. I began using these triggers as little alarm bells reminding me to watch the voice in my head.
In the beginning, I usually found myself “watching the voice” during the middle of an argument. The voice had a berating tone, and in my head, it was saying something like “How dare you!!! Don’t you know how much I am doing around here??!! You are so ungrateful!!” And I was simultaneously aware that I was angry.
After several weeks of watching the voice in my head, I perceived a subtle shift within. I was still angry and arguing a lot, but I was aware as I was doing it. I was watching myself in the act of arguing! It was almost as if there were two separate versions of me inside: one was watching and one was arguing. I noticed that a quote from the Untethered Soul says, “To be aware that you are watching the voice talk is to stand on the threshold of a fantastic inner journey.” This was encouraging!!
I read the book again, this time paying more attention to the section on energy. This section spoke about the importance of inner energy and keeping your heart open so that the energy flows. In Chapter 7 there is a particular quote that caught my attention. It read, “A wise person remains centered enough to let go every time the energy shifts into a defensive mode. The moment the energy moves, and you feel your consciousness start to get drawn into it, you relax and release.”
Armed with this new mandate to “relax and release,” this is what happened…..
It was dinner time. I was exhausted but had eked out a meal of tacos with rice and beans for the family. Upon entering the kitchen, instead of thanking me for dinner, my husband commented, “Where’s the lettuce?”
Seems like an innocent enough question but I was tired, really tired, and feeling resentful that I always seemed to be the one doing all of the chores.
In the past, I probably would have told him to get his own damn lettuce, but I did not. I could feel the fury rising quickly inside of me and my alarm bell started going off. I was being triggered, and as I began to “watch” I also remembered Singer’s words, “relax and release.”
With the anger rising inside me like hot lava ready to explode, instead of focusing on what the voice was saying, I used my newfound awareness in the moment to focus on the tight energy in my body, which had alerted me to the fact that I was being triggered in the first place. As I left the voice behind to focus my awareness on the moving energy, I felt the sensations and tried to relax and release.
In only a few fleeting seconds of feeling the sensation of anger in me rather than expressing it outwardly, I had a realization. It came in two parts; 1) I realized that just because my husband wanted lettuce did not mean that I had to get the lettuce and 2) there was no reason to be mad or upset with my husband for wanting lettuce.
These realizations might sound trivial, but for me they felt nothing short of revelation! In an instant, I was able to separate myself from a story in my head. The story was that I needed to comply with other people’s wishes.
Wow. I’m not sure where this idea had come from, but in that instant, I could see the part that I was playing in my own unhappiness. I was indeed helping to create what I believed. I just had been unaware of my own belief and its implications in my life.
In the belief that I needed to comply, I I often did comply with what I thought others wanted or what was expected of me regardless of my true desires and needs. Over time, however, I became angry and argumentative as it seemed certain things were just expected of me. The unconscious belief that I needed to comply was creating the opposite of what I actually desired, which was help and support.
The power of this realization was profound, and I wondered what other beliefs I might be unconsciously holding onto. The desire to understand the unconscious stories that were running my life behind the scenes had been born along with the practice of Energetic Inquiry.