I was given this book to read by my aunt who thought that it would be a good fit given my liking for spirituality.

To be candid, I didn’t think that I would like the book. On first glance, it seemed kind of esoteric and very “woo woo.”

I recognized that the author, Michael Singer, drew a lot of his ideas from NLP or neuro linguistic programming. It was basically introducing NLP to a broad audience through the guise of spirituality. This book also has many commonalities with the Power of Now by Echartolle.

The more I dived into the book, the more I liked it. While I still stick to those assertions above, the book did come to grow on me over time.

I started learning a bit more about Singer and was surprised to find that he also had a pretty successful business career.

I am willing to bet he put a lot of money into his book launch. Kudos to his success in the spiritual niche.

Below, I’m going to share some of my notes from the book. I recommend reading through the entire book if you’re interested in getting a clearer insight into how the mind works.

Notes

• The voice in your head is just a voice talking and you are listening. It is not you.
• There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind. You are the one who hears it.
• Your thoughts have no affect on anybody except you. They are simply making you feel better or worse what is going now now, what has gone on in the past, or what might go on in the future.
• My question: if a person doesn’t know language, what do they hear?
• When energy builds up inside, you want to do something about it. That voice talks because your’e not okay inside and talking releases energy.
• Narration makes you more comfortable about the world around you.
• There are many things you see at a given moment, yet you only narrate a few of them. The ones you discuss in your mind are the ones that matter to you.
• If you can’t get world how you want, you verbalize it and then decide what to do. It makes you feel empowered.
• You are the one that notices the voice talking.
• The way to catch on to what your inner roommate is really like is to personify it externally.
• Inner voice gives bad advice.
• Consciousness = awareness = attention + memory + judgement
• Consciousness can focus on different things. If it concentrates enough, your sense of awareness loses itself in the object.
• We become lost in objects we’re focused on, like TV.
• Your thoughts and emotions synchronize with what’s happening on the screen.
• Willpower and willpower depletion
• Opening allows energy in. Closing blocks it out.
• Anytime you want to close, ask if you want to cut off the energy flow.
• You must buy that there isn’t anything worth closing over.
• If you aren’t centered, your consciousness is just following whatever catches its attention. You are very scattered.
• Thoughts and emotions get stronger the more attention you give them.
• Fear is the cause of every problem. It’s the root of all prejudices and the negative emotions of anger, jealousy, and possessiveness.
• Consciousness goes to the place that distracts it most
• In order to grow you must give up the struggle to remain the same and learn to embrace change. Embrace problems as agents for growth.
• Live and experience life rather than trying to use life to fix what’s wrong inside of you.
• Everything will be okay as soon as you’re okay with everything
• Real growth takes place when you finally decide to deal with the pain.
• Accept pain. Let it have it’s moment. Then let it pass.
• See what happens to you when you don’t do the things that make you comfortable. What you’ll see is why you’re doing them.
• Any condition you create will limit your happiness. You have to decide to be unconditionally happy.
• Use life to evolve spiritually
• Events have happened and we continue to hold their energy inside of us by resisting them.
• Life is giving you a gift, and that gift is the flow of events that takes place between your birth and your death.
• What you’re doing at any moment is something that someone was doing when they died.
• Are you living life or living mind?