I re-read the early chapters from a couple of my favourite books on mindfulness and they have plenty of useful ideas which can help shape the longitudinal sequence I’m planning. This post summarises each book’s key points and quotes.
Letting Go
Chapter 2: The mechanism of letting go
1. Feelings generate thoughts
“It is the accumulated pressure of feelings that causes thoughts. One feeling, for instance, can create literally thousands of thoughts over a period of time.”
“When we relinquish or let go of a feeling, we are freeing ourselves from all of the associated thoughts.”
2. The pain is in the feeling, not the thought
“It is not thoughts or facts that are painful but the feelings that accompany them. Thoughts in and of themselves are painless, but not the feelings that underlie them!”
3. Three ways people handle feelings
None of which actually resolve anything:
- Suppression and repression. The pressure doesn’t disappear – it resurfaces as irritability, tension, and eventually illness.
- Expression. Venting is widely misunderstood as healthy:
- “The expression of a feeling, first, tends to propagate that feeling and give it greater energy.”
- Escape. Avoidance through distraction:
- “People are desperate to stay unconscious… People are terrified of facing themselves.”
4. Stress is internal, not external
“The real source of ‘stress’ is actually internal; it is not external, as people would like to believe.”
External events don’t cause stress – they trigger accumulated emotional pressure already present. What we’ve repressed colours everything we perceive.
5. How letting go actually works
“Letting go involves being aware of a feeling, letting it come up, staying with it, and letting it run its course without wanting to make it different or do anything about it.”
The key instruction – ignore the thoughts entirely:
“When letting go, ignore all thoughts. Focus on the feeling itself, not on the thoughts. Thoughts are endless and self-reinforcing, and they only breed more thoughts.”
And this line frames ThoughtCounter’s deeper purpose:
“The real Self is the space between the thoughts, or more exactly, the field of silent awareness underneath all thoughts.”
6. Resistance Is Normal
“Letting go of negative feelings is the undoing of the ego, which will be resistant at every turn.”
Letting Go
Chapter 3: The anatomy of emotions
1. Emotions are more primary than thoughts
“The mind is a survival mechanism, and its method of survival is primarily the use of emotions. Thoughts are engendered by the emotions and, eventually, emotions become shorthand for thoughts. Thousands and even millions of thoughts can be replaced by a single emotion.”
2. Thoughts are filed by feeling, not fact
“Self-awareness is increased much more rapidly by observing feelings rather than thoughts. The thoughts associated with even one feeling may literally run into the thousands.”
3. Fear of life is fear of emotions
“Fear of life is really the fear of emotions. It is not the facts that we fear but our feelings about them. Once we have mastery over our feelings, our fear of life diminishes.”
Letting Go
Key takeaways
- The thought counting is an entry point – feelings are the real territory.
- Suppression, expression, and escape are the three default modes the sequence must help people move beyond.
- The space between thoughts is what ThoughtCounter is ultimately pointing toward.
- Resistance to practice is normal and workable.
The Untethered Soul
Chapter 1: The voice inside your head
1. The voice never stops
“There is nothing more important to true growth than realising that you are not the voice of the mind – you are the one who hears it.”
2. The voice recreates the world
“You re-create the world within your mind because you can control your mind whereas you can’t control the world.”
3. The commotion is the problem
“It is not the events of life that cause problems – it is the commotion the mind makes about life.”
4. Emotional pressure amplifies the voice
When fear, desire, or anxiety are elevated, the mental chatter intensifies. This maps directly onto what ThoughtCounter participants discovered.
The Untethered Soul
Chapter 2: Your inner roommate
1. Personifying the voice creates distance
“Someone who’s endlessly judging, criticising, nitpicking, making demands, and can never be satisfied.”
2. You are the witness
“The true Self is ‘The Witness’ – the subject who observes objects but is not identified with those objects.”
3. The solution Is always inner
“The key to solving problems is understanding and improving how situations affect you on the inside.”
“Ask yourself: which part of me is bothered by this?”
The Untethered Soul
Chapter 3: Who Are You?
1. The identity question
“You are not your self-concept… You may assemble the most amazing collection of thoughts and emotions… but it is not you. You are the one who did this.”
2. The self-concept is a defence mechanism
“This need to protect yourself is where the entire personality comes from. It was created by building a mental and emotional structure to get away from that sense of fear.”
3. We defend concepts, not bodies
“We now experience the daily need to defend our self-concepts rather than our bodies. Our major struggles end up being with our own inner fears, insecurities, and destructive behaviour patterns, and not with outside forces.”
4. Awareness is what remains
“There is nothing more important to true growth than realising that you are not the voice of the mind — you are the one who hears it.”
The Untethered Soul
Key takeaways
- The inner voice is universal, automatic, and observable – the count makes this tangible.
- You are the awareness observing thoughts, not the thoughts themselves.
- The “which part of me is bothered?” question is directly usable as a sequence prompt.
- Both books point toward the same territory: awareness beneath the noise.
- Counting thoughts is the doorway into the inquiry, not the end destination.