The Experiment of A Lifetime ⋆ Evoking Grace

June is here and I decided to take a short break from blogging so to gather fresh ideas for new posts to come.

I thought it’d be nice to leave my loyal readers in company of the insightful Michael A. Singer .

In his “The Surrender Experiment“ Michael tells the extraordinaire story of what happens when, after a deep spiritual awakening, he decides to let go of his personal preferences and simply let life call the shots.

I’d like you to reflect upon the following passage from the book and see what feelings arise.

Do you feel uncomfortable with letting go of wanting to be the one in control?

Would that make you free instead? Liberated, perhaps?

And if so, could you let yourself slowly loosen that grip on life?

“Thus far my entire path to inner freedom was focused around my meditations.

That was where I went to become filled with a deep sense of peace and serenity.

And it was working, to a degree.

I could sit for hours with a beautiful flow of energy lifting me upward, but I couldn’t break through to where I longed to.

Furthermore, the personal mind always returned once I got up and became active.

I needed help, and it came one day in a flash of realization.

It dawned on me that perhaps I’d be going about this in the wrong way.

Instead of trying to free myself by constantly quieting the mind, perhaps I should be asking why my 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.

As I explored this inwardly, the first thing I noticed was that most of my 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 chatter about my personal preferences, and instead, start the willful practice of accepting the flow life was presenting me.

Perhaps this change in focus would quite 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’d do it:

Why did it have to rain today? It always rains when I don’t want it to.

I simply replaced all the meaningless noise with:

Look how beautiful; it’s raining!

I found these practices of acceptance very powerful, and they definitely served to quieten 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 didn’t 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 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’d use each opportunity to simply let him go and surrender to what Life was presenting me.

This was the birth of what I call “The Surrender Experiment” and I was totally prepared to see where it’d 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 non-randomness to the max.

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

[Continues in book]