The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life's Perfection

by Michael A. Singer 

1.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.

2.I am so grateful that surrender had taught me to willingly participate in life's dance with a quiet mind and an open heart.

3.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.

4.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?

5.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.

6.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?

7.A great spiritual teacher once said, “Every day bite off more than you can chew, and chew it.” 

8.Accept the purification power of life's flow.

9.Just kept letting go and practicing nonresistance, whether I liked what was happening or not.

10.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.

11.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.

12.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. The universe has been around for 13.8 billion years, and the processes that determine the flow of life around us did not begin when we were born, nor will they end when we die. What manifests in front of us at any given moment is actually something truly extraordinary—it is the end result of all the forces that have been interacting together for billions of years.

13.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.

14.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.

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