Going Beyond Singer

Clarifying Michael A. Singer’s Concepts

Michael A. Singer’s The Untethered Soul explores a powerful truth: that inner freedom is found not by controlling thoughts and emotions, but by stepping back into the seat of awareness—the true self that observes all experiences without resistance. His approach is experiential and spiritual, yet many of the core insights resonate with emerging neuroscientific understanding.

The use of the word "energy" to describe love is to me quite vague. In this page I offer some more insight into this. Yet the brain is part of the material world too, even though it is very complex and interconnected. It is far advanced over our home computers which work mostly as serial recipe readers. My computer in the machine I am using has 16 parallel paths in its CPU. Compare this to the brain which has billions, maybe trillions of processes going on at the same time.

One useful concept, is that the consciousness works something like the operating system of a computer. So if place our consciousness at a high level, it can cause the whole brain to work together, and keep lower level from taking over control. Consciousness not only makes us aware, it may act as a cocoon to hold everything in the brain so it works together and does not fight itself, or otherwise go off the rails.

Cognitive Noise Control

There’s a voice in your head that never stops talking. It judges, comments, worries about the future, and dwells on the past. It has something to say about everything. Most people go through life listening to this voice, believing it’s who they are. But it’s not. It’s simply the mind’s habit of constant chatter—like a radio that never turns off.

Science has a name for this background activity: the Default Mode Network. When the brain isn’t focused on something specific, this network kicks in.

It’s active when we’re daydreaming, remembering the past, planning ahead, or just having inner conversations. When something unpleasant happens, a single negative thought can repeat over and over, feeding a matching negative emotion.

If this cycle continues unchecked, it can take over. We might react emotionally and say things we don’t mean. So how do we break the spell?

It starts with understanding that our peace of mind depends on our consciousness—and that consciousness must be trained. If we let it run wild, it gets stuck following the internal voice, looping through the same thoughts again and again.

The solution is to separate consciousness from the voice. We must shift it to a deeper place within us—what many spiritual traditions call the soul, or what we can simply call the true self. This is the part of us that watches, reflects, and chooses. When consciousness is rooted in the true self, it can observe the inner voice, question it, and disagree with its exaggerations or fears.

From this place, we can make better decisions. It’s like an engineer fine-tuning a machine. Instead of letting the internal voice run the show, the true self steps in and gently redirects.

But often, people don’t make this shift. They stay identified with the inner voice and believe everything it says. The inner voice is just a problem-solving machine. It tries to fix everything—even when it can’t. After all, there are nearly nine billion people on Earth, and we can’t control any of them. We can’t control nature either. It rains or it doesn’t. Things happen outside of our control.

We can control ourselves, however, to the point of being happy and productive most of time. By controlling ourselves, we control what we do. We can see that our tasks get done. We wash the dishes, clean the house or have someone else do it. We eat the right food, and get the right sleep. We end of living longer, being happier, and in general things go much better.

More so, what we can do is ask the inner voice to calm down. If it’s not needed, it can be quiet.

When our consciousness is centered in the true self, we can clearly see that the voice is not who we are. It’s just a tool—sometimes helpful, sometimes annoying—that needs guidance.

The most powerful realization is this: you are not your thoughts. You are the one who hears them. Just like you can turn off a loudspeaker or point a microphone in another direction, you can step back from the noise.

That’s the gift: realizing that the noise is not you. You are the one who hears it—and the one who can let it go.

Clarifying Singer's Concept of Energy

Scientifically, energy is defined as the ability to do work. Gasoline, for example, contains energy because it can power a car. Similarly, when we eat food, we bring energy into our bodies. This is the physical form of energy.

But emotional experiences affect us differently. If we go through a trauma—like when someone we love leaves us—we often feel drained, as though we’ve lost energy. We might even feel empty and confuse that emptiness with hunger. But it’s not physical energy we’re missing; our consciousness is simply fixated on the sudden absence of love.

So what is love? Love is one of the most precious connections we can share with another person. In its presence, we feel joy. Kindness flows freely. There’s a sense of harmony, support, inspiration, and shared purpose. Love lifts us up—it’s a state of goodness that engages the highest parts of our minds. Neuroscience shows that when we're in this state, areas like the frontal lobe are more active, and everything seems to make more sense.

But when someone criticizes us or makes us feel small, that loving energy fades. The warmth disappears. That’s what Michael A. Singer refers to as an “energy blockage.” It’s like the flow of something essential has been cut off—not just a line of communication, but the entire system of joy, trust, and connection that love sustains.

When we experience love, it touches every part of our being. We feel connected not only to another person, but to life itself. We love ourselves more fully, and the world around us takes on a richer, more vibrant meaning.

Love is like a tapestry woven from threads of happiness, kindness, purpose, and support. If we’re emotionally strong and resilient, small disruptions don’t destroy the whole—it’s just a snag in the fabric. And if we are spiritually mature, even bigger challenges can be repaired.

When the heart closes, it’s because consciousness has allowed it to. Consciousness is not fixed; it moves. And if it moves toward healing, love, and perspective, we build resilience. The heart, then, is more than just an emotional center—it’s a reflection of everything good within us: how we see the world, how we help others, and how we recognize something greater than ourselves.

Singer often speaks about “opening the heart.” This isn’t just about signals moving through nerves. It’s about harmonizing the many parts within us—emotions, thoughts, intentions—all working together. When we close down, we weaken hat harmony. We move consciousness to a less empowered place.

For example, if a marriage becomes focused only on sex, love tends to become mechanical. Certain hormones can suppress the more thoughtful, emotional parts of the brain, like the frontal lobes. But if love leads and sex is just one part of a much deeper connection, then intimacy becomes something beautiful—like icing on a cake rather than the whole cake itself.

So when we talk about the heart "opening" or "closing," we’re not just referring to a simple valve. We’re talking about the openness or restriction of a whole inner system.

It’s true that most people open up when good things happen and close down when things go wrong. But this emotional reactivity is a sign of immaturity. If we stay attached to every passing moment—good or bad—our lives become unpredictable and unstable. One moment we’re happy, the next we’re sad, and it all seems random.

But we can rise above this randomness. If we keep our consciousness centered in the true self and learn to love each moment no matter what, our lives become more consistent, peaceful, and full. This isn’t easy. It takes deep inner work. It takes meditation, mindfulness, and the decision to be fully present—because our time here is limited, and every moment matters.

Psychoactive Drugs and Conscious Access to System Parameters

Psychoactive substances, from psychedelics like psilocybin to stimulants or sedatives, alter the brain’s chemistry and neural connectivity. Singer does not advocate for chemical means, but the effects of these drugs on consciousness can offer fascinating insights that support his ideas. Psychedelics, in particular, are known to reduce activity in the default mode network—the very system tied to the inner narrator—and enhance global brain connectivity, which often leads to ego dissolution, increased awareness, and emotional catharsis.

We might think of these substances as temporary access to hidden system parameters in the brain—like a user accessing developer mode on a computer or tuning the filters in a signal-processing system. Under psychedelics, the boundaries that normally partition thoughts, memories, and sensory input break down, often resulting in a profound experience of interconnectedness and clarity—an experience that Singer describes as natural when one lets go fully.

However, whereas drugs force these changes from the outside, Singer’s method involves intentionally releasing control and relaxing into awareness. His approach is like reprogramming the system from within the operating environment, without external hacks or injections—allowing the nervous system to evolve naturally through conscious practice. This is in my mind a much more healthy way to do it. One can use drugs such as alcohol to make one feel "good", but alcohol is addictive. One might be cautious in experimenting with drugs. I have seen people's minds damaged by chemicals.

Speculative Integration: Consciousness as the Master Operating System

As we said in the introduction, consciousness keeps the brain in check. It also makes us feel alive. More importantly, if we let our consciousness to step back and view the whole brain, great things happen. We unify the brain, making all parts work together, synchronizing their activities. We can get along with others much better with consciousness focused at a high spiritual level where we think of others and not so much ourself. The self-concept—the “me”—as the ego causes a person to think about how important they are at the expense of others. But consciousness, as Singer describes it, is the master operating system: always present, silently running in the background, unaffected emotionally by what happens.

Conclusion: Toward a Unified Model of Inner Freedom

Michael Singer’s The Untethered Soul offers a timeless method for attaining inner peace by shifting identification from the thinking mind to the witnessing consciousness. Neuroscience increasingly validates the benefits of this shift, showing that awareness, emotional openness, and reduced identification with thoughts lead to improved mental health and well-being. Allowing the consciousness to unify the whole brain works much better than allowing consciousness to just float around.