The Surrender Experiment

my journey into life's perfection

By Michael A Singer

One Quote

All this exposure to intensely powerful people and situations was having a profound effect on the 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.

For the next few years, my Medical Manager Practice Services Division continued to grow to its peak financial success. We grew to more than twenty-three hundred employees and were generating more than three hundred million dollars a year in revenue. We were the most widely installed practice management vendor in the country, and we had begun turning our attention toward building a fully computerized electronic health record. It was a period with tremendous challenges that I thought was putting me through unprecedented growth. Little did I know that life's portal of dramatic change was about to open up once again. When it did this time, it would completely redefine for me what it meant to go through a transformational growth experience.

Summary

This memoire outlines the author's career, which progresses from college dropout hermit who spends all day meditating in the woods and sleeping a van, to contractor builder who renovates and builds houses, to a prison Buddhism service leader, to software hobbyist, to software consultant, to CEO of a multimillion-dollar tech company. The book is like a gratitude note written from the author to Serendipity. He attributes all of his success and growth to what he calls "surrendering to the universe". 

As I mentioned, the book outlines the author's career, but the bulk of the focus is not on his profession or his business. Most of the book is centered around his inner spiritual maturation. He talks a lot about his meditation practices, the spiritual epiphanies he experiences, and the people he meets along the way. His pivotal insight that changed the course of his life, was when he realized that there was another element of his psyche which was not the one speaking, feeling emotions, and having desires and plans. He noticed that there was an observer. He was the one watching his feelings, inner monologue, and desires. He realized that the voice in his head (who previously had control of all his words) was annoying. He couldn't identify with the whiny and insecure part of himself; his true self was the observer. He began to feel that there was no escape until one day during his meditation practice he found stillness, and in it bliss. From then on he would chase the stillness like an addict chasing that first high. His whole life and career was an experiment in letting go of his ego. 

Later in his journey, he had another epiphany that all along he was suppressing and ignoring his ego, and ignoring part of his nature. When he finally integrated his "annoying voice" with his "observer" and began to live in harmony with the different parts of his psyche, he reached a new level.

Big Ideas

The Observer and the Voice

The author's pivotal insight, that changed the course of his life, was when he realized that there was another element of his psyche which was not the one speaking, feeling emotions, and having desires and plans. He noticed that there was also an observer. The true him was the observer watching his feelings, inner monologue, and desires. He realized that the voice in his head (who previously had control of all his words) was annoying. It always had something to say. For a long time he felt that there was no escaping that whiny incessant complaining and desirous voice, until one day during his meditation practice he found stillness, and in it bliss.

The practice of mindfulness is about noticing our thoughts. Wikipedia says Mindfulness is the cognitive skill usually developed through exercises, of sustaining metacognitive awareness towards the contents of one's own mind and bodily sensations in the present moment. 

Surrender

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.

From Inner Work to Serving Others

Singer recounts the events that led him to serving prison inmates, and calls it the most important thing he's ever done. One day somebody asked him to fulfill a visit wish from a friend who was "pen pals" with an inmate at a local penitentiary. Although he didn't feel like doing it, and the request was odd, he surrendered to the universe and took the strange quest. Visiting the jail allowed him to meet many people who were battling with their inner voice, and longed for a path to inner growth. The author began visiting weekly and leading counseling conversations with groups of inmates, and eventually turned it into a "Buddhist Religious Service" where he would give sermons about his thought on "the voice" and his own meditations. This service brought him great satisfaction and transformation. Rather than being stuck in his own internal world, he derived joy from serving others and helping them along their journeys. It was an important part of his growth because it led him to do software consulting in service of others.

Creativity and Inspiration

To me, this proposed merger was simply what was happening next. I didn't need to think about it; I already knew that nothing inside of me wanted to merge the company with Synetic or anyone else. I loved what I was doing. I had a vision burning inside of me that had driven me for twenty years. It started while I was first writing this amazing program, and it never subsided for a single moment. That vision inspired me day and night. I didn't want to eat, and I didn't want to sleep. I was driven to perfect the program, its distribution, and the support of the doctors who had entrusted their practices to us. I felt like life had given me this task, and I was honored to do it. I had not lost one drop of my early focus or yearning to explore the deeper inner states. This surrendering to life was my path to self-realization, and there was no doubt that it was working. I was not living a life based on what I wanted or didn't want. Those types of thoughts had ceased passing through my mind long ago. I was way too busy trying to do the work life had given me. this was Karma yoga at its highest. I had given my life to the Universal Flow, and it had not only taken it -- it had devoured me in the process. I didn't care at all what happened to me. I cared about the company, the employees, the doctors, and, above all, the vision of perfection that drove the very beat of my heart.

Some people call it a purpose, a life's task, or a calling. Mickey Singer found his in the form of "The Medical Manager". He felt the universe calling him to digitize medical and insurance records for medical practices. He loved the coding, the people he led, and the process. This opened a gateway to creativity and inspiration that was persistent. To him, his work and his love were not separate parts of his life. They were integrated together. I'm reminded of a quote Brian often shares in Heroic from Lawrence Perasall Jacks. 

A master in the art of living draws no sharp distinction between his work and his play, his labour and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence through whatever he is doing and leaves others to determine whether he is working or playing. To himself he always seems to be doing both. Enough for him that he does it well.