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The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

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The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection

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Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. And if we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal, and the fact that we are not actually in control of life’s events should be self-evident.

Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.

Every day, we give precedence to our mind’s thoughts over the reality unfolding before us. We regularly say things like, “It better not rain today because I’m going camping” or “I better get that raise because I really need the money.”

it’s as though we actually believe that the world around us is supposed to manifest in accordance to our own likes and dislikes.

If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to?

what would happen if we respected the flow of life and used our free will to participate in what’s unfolding, instead of fighting it?

Am I better off making up an alternate reality in my mind and then fighting with reality to make it be my way, or am I better off letting go of what I want and serving the same forces of reality that managed to create the entire perfection of the universe around me?

My personal experience is that aligning one’s will with the natural forces unfolding around us leads to some surprisingly powerful results.

It was right there! Such was the shift that happened inside of me. It was so obvious—I was in there watching my thoughts and emotions. I had always been in there watching, but I had been too unaware to notice. It was as though I had been so involved in their details that I never saw them as just thoughts and emotions.

I know what I see and I know what I feel. After all, I’m the one in here seeing and feeling. Why does it have to get vocalized in my mind?

Another question that arose was who am I who keeps noticing all this mental activity? Who am I who can just watch thoughts come up with a complete sense of detachment?

Every day I was learning so much about myself. I couldn’t believe the amount of self-consciousness and fear being expressed through that voice. It was so obvious that the person I was watching inside cared a great deal about what people thought of him. This was especially true of people I knew well.

Whenever I noticed thoughts being stitched together to create a new “me,” I knocked the chair out from under them. It was very painful, but I was willing to let it all go if it freed me to explore beyond.

It was not so much that I was running away from something—I was running into myself.

I was gradually learning that life was not as fragile as that voice in my head would have me believe. There were experiences to be had, but only if you were willing to have them.

I was beginning to see all these experiences as a gift from life.

I sat in a hut with women breast-feeding their babies. I had never seen that before. I noticed I actually felt ashamed that my culture had so distorted nature that natural things were no longer natural.

This stuff meant nothing to me and so much to them. This was another one of life’s lessons I never forgot: the joy of helping people.

I was willing to face loneliness and fear and not grab for relief. Yet something happened on its own, without my doing it or even asking for it. The seeds of a great experiment were being planted. Was it possible that life had more to give us than we could ever take for ourselves?

I would eventually learn that everything in life has something to teach you and that it is all for your growth.

I did not worry about what I was writing or second-guess my thoughts. It was very much like meditation. I kept my personal self out of it completely and just let unbridled inspiration flow.

“Every day bite off more than you can chew, and chew it.” Life was teaching me some very important lessons.

Some very great beings had walked this path before me. I wanted to learn from them. I was just starting to realize that I couldn’t walk the path alone—I needed some help.

As I explored it inwardly, the first thing I noticed was that most of the mental activity revolved around my likes and dislikes. If my mind had a preference toward or against something, it actively talked about it. I could see that it was these mental preferences that were creating much of the ongoing dialogue about how to control everything in my life. In a bold attempt to free myself from all that, I decided to just stop listening to all the chatter about my personal preferences, and instead, start the willful practice of accepting what the flow of life was presenting me. Perhaps this change in focus would quiet things down inside.

I clearly remember deciding that from now on if life was unfolding in a certain way, and the only reason I was resisting it was because of a personal preference, I would let go of my preference and let life be in charge.

I didn’t want to be in charge of my life; I wanted to be free to soar far beyond myself. I began to see this as a great experiment. What would happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my resistance and let the flow of life be in charge? The rules of the experiment were very simple: If life brought events in front of me, I would treat them as if they came to take me beyond myself. If my personal self complained, I would use each opportunity to simply let him go and surrender to what life was presenting me. This was the birth of what I came to call “the surrender experiment,” and I was totally prepared to see where it would take me.

I had gone through most of my life thinking I knew what was good for me, but life itself seemed to know better.

I was willing to roll the dice and let the flow of life be in charge.

I had felt as though life was asking me to willingly let a part of me die that day. But now I realized that life was asking me to get out of the way and let her do her thing. I was so glad I had been willing to take that risk.

Surrender—what an amazingly powerful word. It often engenders the thought of weakness and cowardice. In my case, it required all the strength I had to be brave enough to follow the invisible into the unknown. And that is exactly what I was doing. It’s not that surrender gave me clarity about where I was going—I had no idea where it would lead me. But surrender did give me clarity in one essential area: my personal preferences of like and dislike were not going to guide my life. By surrendering the hold those powerful forces had on me, I was allowing my life to be guided by a much more powerful force, life itself.

By that stage of my growth, I could see that the practice of surrender was actually done in two, very distinct steps: first, you let go of the personal reactions of like and dislike that form inside your mind and heart; and second, with the resultant sense of clarity, you simply look to see what is being asked of you by the situation unfolding in front of you. What would you be doing if you weren’t being influenced by the reactions of like or dislike? Following that deeper guidance will take your life in a very different direction from where your preferences would have led you. That is the clearest I can explain my surrender experiment, and it became the foundation of both my spiritual and worldly life.

reached into my psyche that night and rearranged my entire relationship with myself. I no longer saw the lower aspect of myself, with all his personal issues and melodramas, as the enemy that had to be destroyed. I looked at him now with a new understanding. I needed to use all these disturbed personal energies for my ascent. It was perfectly clear to me that since he was the problem, he was also the solution. I actually felt a tinge of compassion toward that struggling person within me.

That morning when I stopped on my way to the temple, I closed my eyes and opened the giant wooden doors to that very special room. The person I had left sitting on the meditation seat immediately straightened himself up. As I approached him, he became more disciplined and focused. In drastic contrast to how strict I had been in the past, I reached my hand out to him in a kind and caring manner and said, “You can come out now.” What followed that utterance makes me ashamed to this day for thinking this practice was some sort of an innocent mind game. The moment I said those words, I experienced an emotional release the intensity of which I had never imagined possible. Tears poured from my eyes, and my legs completely buckled beneath me. My heart broke open as though some major event had taken place that allowed for a lifetime’s worth of relief. Once this cathartic release had run its course, I realized something I will never forget: that scared, troubled person in there whom I had been watching and judging was indeed a person. The psyche is a person with feelings and thoughts, hopes, fears, and dreams. He is not to be locked in a room and constantly told to shut up. There are much more constructive ways to deal with these disturbed, self-centered energies. Unfortunately, I had to learn this the hard way—through experience. Feeling more whole than I had been feeling for a long while, I remembered my statement in the dream, I’ll have to find another way. There was no question as to what “the other way” would be. I had to learn to surrender more, instead of struggling so much. I had already determined to surrender to life’s flow, even if I couldn’t understand where it was taking me. I had to do the same thing inwardly. I needed to learn to just relax inside instead of fighting with my mind so much. Just because the voice talks doesn’t mean I have to listen to it or let it affect the direction of my life. It has nothing to do with me—I can just relax regardless of what it’s saying. I was back to the basics: I am the one who notices the voice talking.

In my meditations, I had been achieving heights by pushing down on the lower energies. But that was just a form of suppression. I had to learn to channel those energies upward instead of pushing them away from me.

Done properly, yoga is the science of channeling all energies upward until they merge together at the highest point—Oneness.

if it’s down to a matter of preference—life wins.

The difference is amazing between the first time you do something and the next. I felt like I knew what I was doing, and that gave me a sense of confidence and inner strength.

How would I ever know what life was capable of doing if I was always in control?

I was becoming surrounded by a life that had been built for me, not by me. In my wildest dreams, however, I could never have imagined where this was going to lead me.

My whole being thought my path to self-realization was about meditation. Fortunately, life knew better, and she was starting to guide me away from myself through service to others.

For years I had thought that a spiritual life was about spending every day in silence and solitude. I was now running around getting all this work done. Yet somehow I felt more open and more connected to the energy flow than ever before.

On my new path to awakening, life was no longer an obstacle to my growth. Life was now the battlefield on which I was to remain conscious enough to willingly permit my old self to be stripped away.

Little by little, the items in the temple began to represent all religions, all saints, and all masters. As its roof rafters stretched up toward the sky, the temple also belonged to those whose religion was the reality of the Infinite.

This temple was universal in its embrace of all the religions, and it was universal in its embrace of the universe itself. Thus it came to be called—Temple of the Universe.

I simply put my whole heart into whatever I was doing.

When something is meant to be, it’s fascinating watching it unfold, one event after the other.

the Universal Plan was always much more expansive than my mind could imagine.

I used my work in the world as an opportunity to let go of myself and remain calmly centered.

None of this had anything to do with me—I was just the middleman, the caretaker.

something would work out.

By watching different parts of my psyche get stimulated, I could learn to let them go. Without realizing it, I had become conscious enough to use sitting in a bank preparing for the inevitable loan rejection as an opportunity to fall behind whatever the voice was saying. If the whole purpose of my surrender to life was to get rid of myself, it was working out quite well.

It is difficult to explain how sincere those men locked up in a maximum-security prison became about their inner freedom. The walls could hold their bodies, but nothing could imprison their souls—except their own minds. They saw this at a very deep level.

On this earth, there are many different places where people live. Some are high places and some are low places. That hole where David was living in solitary lockup, a veritable prison within a prison, had to be one of the lowest places on earth for a human being to end up. You couldn’t go much lower. Yet the sincerity of his spiritual practices had just attracted one of the higher beings on the planet into that dark hole.

It is so inspiring to look back and see how a handful of moments in your life define your destiny. What if life had not presented those moments to you, or if you had interacted with them differently? Over time, everything would be different.

My formula for success was very simple: Do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart and soul without regard for personal results. Do the work as though it were given to you by the universe itself—because it was.

Some moments in our lives are marked by destiny.

There was the logical, thought-driven mind that links together what we already know into complex patterns of thought in order to come up with logical solutions. Then there was the intuitive, inspiration-driven mind that can look at a problem and instantly see a creative solution.

For years I had been willing to let go of my personal preferences and focus on doing the absolute best I could with what life presented me. I hadn’t expected anything in return, and I was very humbled to see what was unfolding.

This experience only served to reinforce what I was learning from my experiment with surrender. Something that started out looking totally disastrous had ended up with a positive result. Time and again I was seeing that if I could handle the winds of the current storm, they would end up blowing in some great gift. I was beginning to view these storms as a harbinger to transformation.

Perhaps change only takes place when there is sufficient reason to overcome the inertia of everyday life. Challenging situations create the force needed to bring about change. The problem is that we generally use all the stirred-up energy intended to bring about change, to resist change. I was learning to sit quietly in the midst of the howling winds and wait to see what constructive action was being asked of me.

didn’t know what was going on, and I had reached the point of not even wanting to know. I just wanted to cease to interfere with the perfection of life. Apparently, even a business trip to Boston is fair game for a miracle.

These unexpected concurrences of events were like messages from life gently nudging me in the direction she was going. I listened to these subtle nudges instead of listening to the not-so-subtle mental and emotional reactions caused by my personal preferences. This is how I practiced surrender in everyday life, and the purpose of all these stories is to share with you the perfection of the journey that unfolded.

I didn’t understand what was coming at the time, but at least I knew enough to embrace whatever was taking place. I had already learned time and again that it didn’t matter if I understood what was happening; it was sufficient to devote myself to the present moment and trust that the flow of life knew what it was doing.

To be there when a person is soaring high is an easy relationship. To be there during hard times requires deep friendship. All of us had received a great deal from Amrit over the years. We were humbled at the opportunity to give something back.

when push comes to shove, I don’t care what it takes, just free me from myself. The only meaningful prayer is that this white-hot fire be so destructive to the personal self that it severs the cord that binds.

For every thing there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven.

Reality was what it was—might as well use it to let go of the personal self.

What I saw was that no matter who we are, life is going to put us through the changes we need to go through. The question is: Are we willing to use this force for our transformation? I saw that even very intense situations don’t have to leave psychological scars, if we are willing to process our changes at a deeper level.

I had given everything up, and it kept coming back tenfold.

I vowed to serve the company I had watched life build, brick by brick, and to use the money entrusted to me in a way that would help others.

By now, I had become thoroughly convinced that the constant act of letting go of one’s self-centered thoughts and emotions was all that was needed for profound personal, professional, and spiritual growth.

Sitting alone in a six-seater jet at forty thousand feet is a very peaceful place. I fell into meditation and my mind became very still. When I opened my eyes, I absorbed the tremendous difference in my environment from when I had first decided to let go and see where life would take me. I still lived in the same woods and kept my same practices morning and evening, but somehow the rest had changed rather dramatically. I reflected back at how many times life had presented me with changes I was uncomfortable with. In the beginning, it had been difficult to ignore the resistant mind. Over time, as I saw what had transpired by taking the risk of letting go of me, the process had become much more natural. I was surrounded by the results of letting go. There was nothing in my life I could point to that hadn’t come from surrendering to life’s flow. I was so humbled by the process that nothing in me wanted to resist ever again. I was deeply in love with the excitement and wonder of experiencing what would unfold next. It was in this frame of mind that I was off to Texas to meet Synetic’s chairman.

I had been diligently working to free myself of that weak person inside who always insisted on things being the way he wanted. Now, nothing was the way anybody would have wanted. Yet everyone just took a collective deep breath and did whatever was asked of them. It was an amazing thing to be part of, and it taught me a lesson of inner strength that permanently changed me at a very deep level.

The only thing Marv ever said to me about the whole affair was that if you let people hold you hostage, they will force you to make terrible decisions, and you will lose. You might as well take your bumps up front and at least be in control of your destiny. Who would have believed that just a few months later, one of Marty’s senior executives would move the development of the website to New York and relaunch it with a team of less than forty developers. That new website became the foundation for WebMD’s entire future. Again and again I was seeing that each of these intensely challenging business experiences was very beneficial for my spiritual growth. I just kept letting go of whatever discomfort got stirred up within me, and inevitably, a stronger flow of spiritual energy took its place. This growing strength helped prepare me for life’s next growth experience: what happened when Marv’s reorganization team finally got around to taking aim at my division.

Returning home that evening, I was very concerned about the fate of my employees. Tomorrow could turn out to be a very ugly day. At the same time, I knew that Marv had to cut costs, and it was my job as a corporate executive to help him. This could have created a lot of inner tension, but I decided to just surrender to the reality of the situation and be open to balancing these two areas of concern. I came to peace that night knowing my heart was in the right place, and when tomorrow came, I would do the best I could.

Though we were very relieved when the ordeal was over, it had actually turned out to be quite a learning experience.

psyche I watched so diligently. I had never been exposed to this powerful lifestyle. Nothing in me got off on it or wanted anything from it, but it did make me deal with parts of my being that I would not have faced otherwise. If I saw any weakness, fear, or anxiety come up, I just deeply relaxed back into where I was watching from. I simply kept letting go of whatever came up. This is where life had taken me, and I used all these situations as a way of letting go of myself. It was definitely working. I kept being pushed into strongly positive and negative situations, and I increasingly found myself in a very clear and undisturbed state. It seemed that the more challenges life put me through, the less my inner energy flow was affected by outer conditions. What years of willful meditation had not gotten rid of, life’s situations and challenges were rooting out of me. As long as I made getting rid of myself my only goal, every situation was a fruitful experience. If I’d had any other goal, I think the constant pressure would have been overwhelming. I found that I actually got more peaceful inside as I dealt with the ever-increasing magnitude of challenges. Life was molding me each day to become who I needed to be in order to handle tomorrow’s tasks. All I had to do was let go and not resist the process.

Sitting quietly in that office, I could see that this terrible situation was bringing about amazing changes—both inside and out. Life had always done that to me, and accepting those changes was my great experiment. I knew that this attack by the government was no exception. I just had to be willing to go wherever it took me.

These were very unique moments in one’s life—best not to miss them.

This was the backdrop under which I wrote The Untethered Soul. To the core of my being, I wanted to communicate to others that they were deep inside listening to that voice’s incessant chatter, and there was a way they could be free. That was the work of my life—not this absurd legal mess. I didn’t care how threatening this nontruth had become—I wanted to share a deep truth that would brighten the lives of others. I committed myself to the book. Karen and I had finished writing by late 2006, but we were still doing editing passes. I sent an early draft to Randy because I wanted to get his feedback. I also needed my attorney’s permission to do just about anything that might affect the case. Randy was very concerned that the government prosecutors would find a way to use the book against me, as they had been doing with everything else. I told him that I was willing to take that risk. Especially since we had no idea where the case would end up, I needed to get the book published as soon as possible. Having discussed the risks, Randy left the decision to me.

In the midst of that intensely dark period, the book managed to manifest, sprout wings, and soar off around the globe. The feedback from everywhere was overwhelming. The Untethered Soul was fulfilling its purpose—it was helping people. In the midst of phenomenal darkness, it was spreading light.

I didn’t tell Randy at the time, but that moved me to the core of my being. For three years I had been sitting quietly deep inside myself watching the powers that be take Bobby’s lies and turn them into a seemingly unstoppable force of destruction. Suddenly, I was reminded that people I’d never met had possessed the caring and foresight to make sure I had rights. If it was going to be the United States of America versus Michael A. Singer, I had some very great people in my corner—Thomas Jefferson, George Mason, and James Madison, to name just a few. Over the next few years, it would become painfully obvious to me that only a single piece of paper stood between me and the dark abyss. That piece of paper was the U.S. Constitution. I went back and read the Constitution, beginning to end. From the perspective of my predicament, it was so evident that the Founding Fathers were not only creating a government, they were protecting the people from it. I had always known this intellectually, but now it was personal, very personal. This was not a civics course—it was my life. Under these circumstances the Constitution really came alive for me.

My mantra was: This Is Reality—Deal with It.

I loved seeing that out of this darkness, something great was being forged.

The legal ordeal quickly became a distant memory, almost a dream. It had come and gone, just like everything else. I could clearly see that because I had inwardly surrendered each step of the way, no scars were left on my psyche. It had been like writing on water—the impressions only lasted while the events were actually taking place. Yet in the moment of actual experience, each twist and turn had reached deep inside me and forced me past foundational fears and personal boundaries. As long as I was willing to accept the purification power of life’s flow, I kept coming out on the other side a transformed person. How could I consider this a bad experience when it created such beauty and freedom within me? To the contrary, I stand in awe of all that has happened since I started this amazing experiment of acceptance and surrender.

The flow of life had served as sandpaper that, to a great extent, freed me of myself. Unable to unbind myself from the incessant pull of my psyche, in an act of sheer desperation, I had thrown myself into the arms of life.

Joy and pain, success and failure, praise and blame—they all had pulled at what was so deeply rooted within me. The more I let go, the freer I became. It was not my responsibility to find what was binding me; that was life’s job. My responsibility was to willingly let go of whatever was brought up within me.

How could I possibly explain the great freedom that comes from realizing to the depth of your being that life knows what it’s doing? Only direct experience can take you there. At some point there’s no more struggle, just the deep peace that comes from surrendering to a perfection that is beyond your comprehension. Eventually, even the mind stops resisting, and the heart loses the tendency to close. The joy, excitement, and freedom are simply too beautiful to give up. Once you are ready to let go of yourself, life becomes your friend, your teacher, your secret lover. When life’s way becomes your way, all the noise stops, and there is a great peace. In eternal gratitude for all the experiences we call Life…

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