Living Untethered summary

Let’s kick things off with a little experiment. If you can do this right now, find a mirror or a reflective surface, or use the selfie camera on your phone to look at yourself. Obviously, if you’re driving, or doing something else that needs your full attention, this can wait until you’re ready.

So, looking at that image, how does it compare with the way you looked when you were ten, or 20 years old? No doubt you looked different then. Now imagine you’re doing the same exercise 20 or even 30 years in the future. Different again, right? But that’s just what you see. The real you is the same. You aren’t the image you see, you are the one who is doing the seeing – the perceiver – the one who’s in there looking out the whole time.

1. Now think about the differences between you in the past, how you are now, and the future you. Don’t think about your body and ask yourself this question: How old am I in here? You don’t need to answer that right now, just think about it deeply.

Now, let’s kick this thought experiment up a notch or two. Imagine you’ve just come out of the shower and you catch a glimpse of yourself in the mirror. What you see reflected is the opposite sex to you, and your skin color has changed too! You’d be pretty shocked, right? But would that change you in there? Sure, you’d wonder what on earth had happened, but you would still, fundamentally, be you!

Yes, you’re aware of the male or female shape of your body, its age, and its skin color. But, that’s just it – you’re aware of these aspects – but you who notices these things have no body parts, no gender, no age, and no skin color. These things are irrelevant to you in there. Put simply, you are not your body, you are the conscious awareness that notices things about your body.

Once you accept that you are in there, always have been, and now you know you are in there, the question becomes: What’s it like?

If we’re being honest with ourselves, it isn’t always great. It can be pretty tough going. But it can be great in there – always – like the nicest it’s ever been, and even greater. And if things are messed up in there right now, it can be made beautiful again – just like an abandoned house that needs working on.

We all want it to be nice, but often we approach things in the wrong way. We ask how can I make it nice – we seek out exciting experiences, drink or take drugs to take the edge off things, or look for new relationships, for example. But really what we should be asking is: Why isn’t it nice? That way we can get rid of those things. Instead of trying to use the outside to fix what’s wrong inside, we need to explore why it’s not nice to begin with.

Knowing that you are in there and that you know it’s not always nice in there is fundamental to exploring your self and achieving acceptance. To take things a step further, we need to look at what it is that you really experience. In fact, there are only three things: the outside world; your thoughts; and your feelings or emotions. In the next two chapters, we’ll touch on all three.