The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

by Mickey A. Singer

I immediately took a deep breath in and with great intention slowly exhaled through my nostrils. It was as though the outgoing breath pushing against the magnetic force fields created upward lift. That upward and inward propulsion began to drive me to an even deeper place, beyond any sense of self-awareness. One more breath in and out, and I was completely gone. Perhaps you would like to ask where I went. That’s reasonable, but I’m unable to answer that question. I only know that each time I came back, I was in a more elevated state than when I left. When I came back from nowhere the next time, everything was very different. There was no subtle resistance to having returned. There was no sense of urgency to hold on to the elevated state. There was only peace—deep, deep peace. And there was absolute silence, a silence that nothing could possibly disturb. It was so still that perhaps there had never ever been any sound here for all eternity. It was like outer space where there is no atmosphere, so there can be no sound. Sound requires a medium in which to travel. In the place I returned to, there was no such medium. I was truly experiencing the sound of silence. Most important, there was no voice. There was not even the memory of what it would be like to have chatter in that sacred place. It was gone. All gone. All that was left was awareness of being. I simply existed, nothing more. This time no stern beckoning entreated me to go beyond. It was time to come back.

I had to learn to go to classes and take tests while remaining perfectly centered.

I had to learn to use my intellectual mind without disturbing the peace that I now loved more than life itself.

Note that focusing on the energy flow was not something I was doing; it was something that was happening by itself. I was just aware that the flow had never been there before, and now it was always there.

eventually realized that if I didn’t want to listen to the mental chatter, all I had to do was slightly increase my concentration on the energy flow to my brow.

Letting the thoughts go became a game to me.

It was not just a way of escaping the pain; meditation gave meaning to my life.

The command of steel came from behind my fears: no way was I going to miss the opportunity to transcend all this inner commotion. I closed my eyes tighter as an act of defiance and took a deep breath. I demanded a state of relaxation in the midst of the drama.

To me it was like an act of commitment: Which do you care about, outside or inside?

All I needed in my life was solitude, the discipline of my ever-increasing practices, and a minimal amount of food.

Nothing was left in me that wanted to be an economics professor. I wanted to explore inside, deep inside. The depths of my meditations were all I cared about.

At first, no thoughts were involved. It was more of a feeling, just a definitive knowing that I now knew where the paper was going and how to get there. Then the thoughts began to form. They came slowly at first, then they poured into my mind. I still had to pull them together into a logical flow, but the seeds were all there. It was an amazing process to watch.

It came from where art comes from, but the medium of expression was logical thinking instead of marble or paint.

I knew where thoughts came from, but where did inspiration come from? It came from a much deeper place than where I witnessed the thoughts. It came spontaneously, in total silence, with no effort or commotion. No matter how hard I might have tried, I could never have written that paper based solely on the efforts of my logical mind.

succeeded in the purchase, but I didn’t feel a sense of joy. What I felt was a sense of resolute determination. What lay ahead of me was not going to be easy. I had already committed so much of myself to exploring what was beyond me—now I was going to commit everything.

if I had to build this architecturally designed masterpiece of a meditation hut to get there—so be it.

It didn’t take long before I noticed that food had a major effect on my practices. The less I ate, the easier it was to fall into a meditative state.

So I tested the limits of how far I could go without eating. The balance I reached was to eat a small dinner salad every other day and fast in between.

remember trying to start this book the evening Bob had given it to me, but after a few pages I had to put it down. Not because I didn’t like it, but because each word I read kept drawing me into such a deep meditative state that I couldn’t continue reading. I tried again the next night. The same thing happened. I didn’t understand what was going on, but I was certainly intrigued by the experience.

He had learned to exist in that state, yet still be present interacting with the world.

perhaps I’d been going about this in the wrong way. Instead of trying to free myself by constantly quieting the mind, perhaps I should be asking why the mind is so active. What is the motivation behind all the mental chatter? If that motivation were to be removed, the struggle would be over.

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.

my preferences were not leading me, what would happen to me? These questions did not scare me; they fascinated me. 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

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 now going to test that presumption of nonrandomness to the max. I was willing to roll the dice and let the flow of life be in charge.

see whether I could drive into town, teach the class, and return home while keeping my mind reasonably still. To do that I had to practice maintaining a meditative state at many points throughout the day. I would do yoga on the field before I left and do some controlled breathing exercises in my van before going to class. I would even pause to quiet my mind while standing in front of the class before I started and completed a lecture. On this particular day, I drove in, did some breathing, and walked into a large lecture hall full of students. For some reason they started whistling catcalls when I walked in. It took me a moment to come down to earth enough to realize that when I had gotten off the yoga mat out at my place, I had slipped into my jeans but had forgotten to put on a shirt. I was standing there barefooted and half naked.

I no longer saw the administration’s mistake as a problem. I saw it as a challenge to further let go of myself. So I decided to take all three exams and willingly accept the experience of failing the third one.

Later that morning, I parked outside the business school and meditated for a while before going in. I still felt very quiet inside. There was just a sense of peaceful resignation. I remember feeling I had passed the real test—I had proven that I was capable of deeply surrendering if life presented me with something I really did not want to do.

How could this be? It had happened again. In the name of transcending myself, I had surrendered and willingly faced my personal fears. Then at the last moment, instead of certain hell, I was lifted up to heaven.

Driving to the exam, 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 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.

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.

I intended to walk into the first class with a completely empty mind.

I clearly remember granting her request solely because the voice in my head was so resistant to it.

The drive out there took me about ten days because I continued all my meditation sessions along the way.

In my meditations, the deeper I went, the more my breath would slow down—until, eventually, it would naturally stop flowing. I don’t know how long I would stay in that breathless state, but I would come back and gasp for air. At some point, my walk through this cave felt just like that stage of my meditations.

My path to true freedom was subtler than simply requiring a tighter grip.

the Bhagavad Gita says that one should raise the self with Self, not trample down the self. I had been trampling down my personal self in the name of getting free from his humanness. I now needed to learn how to raise those energies up to assist me on the journey.

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.

I had built a mental concept of absolute discipline that was actually holding me back.

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. It took some time, but I eventually began to realize the true purpose of yoga. Done properly, yoga is the science of channeling all energies upward until they merge together at the highest point—Oneness.

On and on it went, but by then I was well trained to just calmly observe all these thoughts being created by the preference-driven mind. After all, if I had wanted another house on the property that voice would be saying, What a miracle! God stepped in and started building me a second house without my having to do a single thing. To me, it didn’t matter what that voice was saying. I knew to the core of my being that I was not going to give him the time of day, not to mention the run of my life. If I had a choice between using this real-life situation to get my way or to free myself from being bound to my way, I would choose freedom every time.

That was the essence of my experiment with life: if it’s down to a matter of preference—life wins. So I went back up the hill, strapped on an apron, and helped them build Sandy’s house.

I wasn’t working on the house for Sandy, or for myself; the flow of life had placed me in this situation.

The words just flowed out. There was no prior thinking involved. The first session laid out the road map of what we were going to do in the class, just as though a curriculum had been decided beforehand. It was similar to when I was writing that economics paper in my van in the woods. Except this time, I was watching a continuous stream of inspiration turning into a powerful lecture. I was not doing any of this—I was just aware of it.

As the semester progressed, this kept happening class after class. I was amazed by what was being taught in these classes.

The sharp line I had drawn between spiritual and nonspiritual had begun to fade.

The energy I experienced while teaching my classes at Santa Fe was the same energy I was dealing with in my yoga and meditations. In meditation, that energy would flow upward and lift me away from my everyday self. When I stood in front of a class, the very same energy would explode into a passionate, heartfelt lecture.

my meditations were much deeper when I sat with the inmates than when I sat for hours at home by myself. I didn’t understand what was happening, but I looked forward to every visit as an experience of spiritual upliftment.

ran the groups pretty much like the classes at Santa Fe. I did not plan any sessions; I just let the energy give the talks.