The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

by Mickey A. Singer

was very surprised to find that the monastic lifestyle came quite naturally to me. I awoke every morning at 3:00 a.m. and sat for a few hours of meditation. I would then do contemplative walking out on the fields. In those early days, I was still holding on to the concept that it was all about concentration and focus. When I walked, I would become acutely aware of every step I took and every movement of my body. This helped to prolong the peace I felt from my morning meditations. I would then do yoga postures outside until it was time for my noon meditation. I held the rope of self-discipline very tightly, every day. It was an extremely strict lifestyle, very different from anything I had ever experienced. But just as an athlete is willing to give everything, every day and night, to train for the Olympics, so I was willing to give everything, every moment, to drop the part of me that was holding me back from where I so desperately wanted to go.

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.

But just as Three Pillars of Zen had shown up exactly when I was ready for it, so another book had found its way to me just before I moved into my house. It was given to me by Bob Merrill, a friend of mine who, like me, was very much into yoga and meditation.

One day while I was still living in my van, Bob gave me the book called Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, a holy man from India. I 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. I decided to pack the book away until I moved into my new house. Now that I had moved into the house and started my intense meditative lifestyle, it was time to read this mysterious book.

It became very clear to me—I had merely stuck my toe into the ocean Yogananda was swimming in. He was a master of the entire field of knowledge and experience I was seeking. I could feel it to the core of my being. Yogananda had gone far beyond my beyond and had never fully come back. He had learned to exist in that state, yet still be present interacting with the world. I had found my teacher.

Yogananda called it self-realization. What a perfect term for all I was about at that point of my life. I wanted to realize the nature of the one who watches—my true, innermost self.

Bob Merrill had told me that he received lessons from Self-Realization Fellowship, the organization Yogananda had founded in America. Yogananda had left the body in 1952, but he had been kind enough to leave his teachings behind in the form of weekly lessons. I had heard of a mail-order bride but never a mail-order guru. I signed up for the lessons immediately and integrated them into my regular practices. I remember that around that time I decided to read the Bible. I had never read the New Testament before. I found it very inspiring, and so much of the teachings were completely aligned with what I had been experiencing in meditation. For example, there was the notion that you have to die to be reborn. That is exactly what I had been trying to do, die of the personal to be reborn in the spiritual. I put pictures of Christ and Yogananda on the altar where I meditated. 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.

This realization opened the door for an entirely new and exciting dimension to my practices. 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 started this new practice with something very simple, the weather. Could it really be so hard to just let it rain when it rains and be sunny when it’s sunny without complaining about it? Apparently the mind can’t do it: Why did it have to rain today? It always rains when I don’t want it to. It had all week to rain; it’s just not fair. I simply replaced all that meaningless noise with: Look how beautiful; it’s raining. I found these practices of acceptance very powerful, and they definitely served to quiet the mind. So I decided to push the envelope and broaden the range of events I would learn to accept. 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.

Clearly, these were uncharted waters for me. Where would I end up? If 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 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 ...

You may think that only a madman would make such a decision. But, in truth, I had already experienced some amazing things that the flow of life had done. I had witnessed firsthand what happened when I let go and followed the subtle events that led me to the hills of Mexico and then to those wonderful experiences with the Mexican villagers. When I got back to the States, I had been led to my beautiful new property, and look what happened with the house. I just wanted to build a simple hut, and that turned into an unexpectedly rich experience. It was clear to me that I had not done these things—they had happened to me. In fact, if I had not let go of my initial mental resistance, none of them could have happened. I had gone through most of my life thinking I knew wh...

My classes generally met three days a week for an hour. I would do my morning and noon yoga practices, run into town to teach, and then run right back out to the land. I doubt I was a real joy to be around in those days—I was completely unsociable. Unless a student had a question after class, I would do my best not to get into conversations. I always wore the same clothes: jeans and a long-sleeved denim shirt. My hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and I was either in sandals or barefoot. This might not seem extreme for the philosophy department, but these were junior-level courses in a southern business school. The department tolerated me only because I was a very popular teacher, and my students did really well on the departmental exams.

It seemed that Florida law required the president of a community college to have a doctoral degree. The banker the committee had chosen, Alan Robertson, did not have his Ph.D. So what did they decide to do? Help him earn his doctorate by partnering him with a top doctoral student who had a similar academic background. As amazing as it seems, the doctoral student they chose was me. The voice in my head went nuclear. I watched it screaming inside, No! I can’t do that. I’ve dropped out of all this. I need to devote my time to my practices. There is no way I’m going to start pulling down all my old economics textbooks—I’m done with that. In the midst of all that protest, I remembered my recent commitment to surrender to what life brought before me. That voice I was watching was not my spiritual adviser; it was my spiritual burden. This was the perfect opportunity to get it out of the driver’s seat.

In that one moment, the die had been cast. This great experiment in surrender had truly begun. I was no longer in charge of my life.

Alan had progressed enough toward his doctorate to sit for his qualifying exams. He surprised me when he proposed that I go ahead and take mine also. I had no interest in doing so, especially since we had only prepared for two of my three major areas of study. But I surrendered to his wishes. I signed up to take the two exams we had studied for and planned to put the third off to another time—if at all. When I received notice back from the university, the administration had mistakenly signed me up for all three exams. Now what was I supposed to do, surrender to that? I started observing myself to see why taking the third exam threatened me so much. I had no intention of actually finishing my degree, so why did it matter? What I discovered was that it was simply the fear of failing in the eyes of others. I knew that if I sat for my written exam in public finance, a field I was completely unprepared for, I would fail miserably. That prospect of failure disturbed me and set the inner voice on a nonstop dialogue about how to avoid the exam. What an opportunity to get rid of that part of me. 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.

I went into the designated room and wrote and wrote. The seeds of inspiration were very fresh in my mind. I was even able to reproduce and embellish upon the chart I had opened to twice. I turned in the notebooks and headed home in a very different state of mind than I had expected. 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—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.

On the day of the interview, I arrived in my normal attire: jeans, a denim shirt, and sandals. The downtown campus of Santa Fe had been pretty liberal, but I had no idea how things were at the new campus with Alan as president. The program director began by asking me what I would like to teach. I figured I was supposed to give an honest answer. I told her I would like to teach what I had been learning about that voice inside your head. I wanted students to understand that they don’t have to listen to that incessant chatter; they have the freedom to come from a much deeper place inside themselves. I also told her that I would like to teach students that they are sitting on a tiny planet spinning through space, and they should be enjoying the journey. To my amazement, her response was to say that the only course available that could allow such a curriculum was an entry-level social science class. The course was required for all freshmen, and a teacher was still needed for one-third of the classes. She explained that teaching those classes would amount to a half-time position at the college. I accepted the position, and she scheduled me to teach my first class in September when the new campus officially opened.

What a flow of events! First life tells me to go to California for the summer; now she’s telling me what to do when I come back. It was all unfolding by itself. I was just along for the ride. I really had no idea what I was going to teach in that class come September. I had never taught what I’d been learning to anyone, let alone a whole class. My personal self began feeling insecure about the whole thing. To straighten him out, I laid down the ground rules: there would not be a single thought about the classes or what would be taught in them until it was time to enter the classroom. I intended to walk into the first class with a completely empty mind. I wanted it to be like the time I wrote that paper completely by inspiration. We’ll just go into the class and see what comes out.

With these intrusions from the outside world starting to steal small chunks of my time, I all the more cherished being alone on my land. Nevertheless, people had a way of finding me, despite my best efforts to protect my solitude. So it was with Sandy Boone, a woman who was into Buddhist meditation and spending time outdoors. I don’t recall where she came from, but one day she showed up and started taking walks on my property. She was careful to respect my privacy; she just wanted to be in nature and meditate outdoors. That was okay until she asked if she could pitch her tent at the far end of the property to do some meditation. I didn’t want to allow that, but who was I to stop someone from meditating? Eventually she got bold enough to ask if she could join me for meditation on Sunday mornings, just for an hour. I clearly remember granting her request solely because the voice in my head was so resistant to it. In time, Sandy began to bring a few friends with her for the Sunday morning meditations. At first it was three, then six, then ten. I didn’t lik...

I awoke from that dream a changed person. My way of thinking had been transformed at a very profound level. For the first time, I questioned whether more and more discipline was going to take me where I so desperately wanted to go. Sitting alone in my van that morning, I knew the answer was no. My path to true freedom was subtler than simply requiring a tighter grip.

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. I would later come to learn that 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.

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.

Despite the changes I was going through, I didn’t change my meditation and yoga sessions. They were not the problem; I was the problem. 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.

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.

The premise of the course was centered on the possibility that one underlying truth exists in the universe, and all of man’s knowledge was just looking at this truth from different perspectives. The exploration of that premise would involve physics, biology, psychology, and religion. What was the possibility that they were all saying the same thing? I had never thought about things in this way before. In fact, I had spent my time learning to not make thoughts a pastime. How could each class come out so perfectly without my doing it? Nonetheless, the presentation was unfolding on a class-by-class basis before my eyes.

Over time, students and their friends began to show up for the Sunday meditations at my place.

I had been telling Dr. Goffman that my life had taken me far from the field of economics, and I had no intention of writing a dissertation. Nonetheless, one day he made me promise, as a personal favor to him, that I would turn in something, anything, for him to read. I had great love and respect for Dr. Goffman, and I saw it as an act of surrender to acquiesce to his wishes. That very night, I sat down on the floor of my house, lit my kerosene lamp, and asked myself if I had something to write that was worth such an enormous undertaking. It only took a moment to realize that I did have something very important to write, and I would love for Dr. Goffman to read it. It seems that life had just given me the perfect opportunity to write about that voice in your head and the oneness behind all of science and religion—just as I had been teaching in my classes at Santa Fe. With that as the topic, I was filled with inspiration. Though I knew it wouldn’t be accepted as an economics dissertation, I put my heart and soul into my writing. As it turned out, the finished document had an unexpected destiny of its own. A professor on my doctoral committee had a publisher contact me, and within a year, my dissertation was published under the title The Search for Truth. Thirty-five years later, that book still sells copies every month on Amazon—a fitting tribute to the acts of surrender that brought it into this world.

Whenever I would go into the prisons, I would feel a powerful increase in the spiritual energy flow within me. And 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.

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.

Before I knew it, I was very deep in meditation. All outer sounds had ceased, as had my mental chatter. I was in a place I had never been before, deep inside my heart. I felt like my heart was a giant cave that was protecting me and loving me. I was completely entranced and at peace.

Life was now the battlefield on which I was to remain conscious enough to willingly permit my old self to be stripped away. But let it be clear, I still had plenty of resistance left in me that had to be overcome.