In The Surrender Experiment, Michael A. Singer describes his 40-year journey from hippie college kid to CEO of a billion-dollar corporation—and attributes it all to saying yes to what life offered. Published in 2015, this book follows Singer’s #1 New York Times best seller, The Untethered Soul (2007), which explores spiritual methods for freeing the mind from limiting thoughts, emotions, and energy.
Michael “Mickey” Singer is an American spiritual teacher, motivational speaker, and author who founded the meditation and yoga center, Temple of the Universe, in Alachua, Florida. He’s a lifelong practitioner of meditation and yoga and a successful software developer. The Surrender Experiment tells the story of how Singer was able to bridge those worlds, expanding both beyond his wildest dreams, through a process of surrendering to the opportunities life presented.
In this guide, we’ll discuss the valuable lessons Singer imparts about how to make your life exactly as the universe wants it to be. First, we’ll summarize the backstory of how Singer became interested in spirituality in his youth and what he learned about quieting the mind. Then we’ll look at how he came to embark upon the “surrender experiment,” discuss some of the specific instances where he applied this method to his life, and describe the extraordinary results.
Throughout the guide, we’ll expand on some of Singer’s realizations by explaining the Buddhist and Hindu principles they’re derived from. We’ll also compare his lessons with those of other spiritual and self-help teachers like Deepak Chopra, Eckhart Tolle, Tara Brach, and Gary Zukav.
Singer shows us what can happen when you let life, or the “universe,” do what it wants to do rather than you trying to make it do what you want. This is what he calls “surrender.” He explains that the universe is imbued with an intelligence that’s far beyond the limits of human understanding. Life has been evolving for billions of years. From the smallest embryonic cells to the vast planetary systems, the forces of life do exactly what they’re meant to do without our intervention. So, Singer reasons, it’s pretty presumptuous of us to think we should know what life should be doing and try to control it. He asks us to instead consider trusting that life knows exactly what’s supposed to happen and allowing it to naturally unfold.
Singer clarifies that surrendering doesn’t mean “dropping out” or being ambivalent about life, but rather it means fully diving into the flow of life. It also doesn’t mean giving up your free will—surrendering means aligning your will with the greater will of the universe. For example, if you’re presented with an opportunity to make some contribution to the world, it’s because life wants that to happen. You should stop to consider the bigger picture rather than decide based on what you like or want. Even if it’s something you don’t particularly want to do, you should recognize that life knows better than you do, and if you take the opportunity, your life will be better for it in ways you can’t always imagine. So the surrender experiment is ultimately an exercise in trust.
Align Your Soul with a Universal Purpose
In The Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav describes the “universe” as the divine loving consciousness that makes up everything in existence. Like many spiritual teachers, he uses “the universe” in the way that some would use the word “God.” Similar to Singer’s idea of surrender, Zukav believes our souls must become aligned with the will of the universe in order to achieve our highest purpose in life. And he says we do this by developing our intuition and listening to our inner voice. Some of the strategies he gives for developing this intuitive wisdom are:
Get in touch with your emotions and really pay attention to them. Even when they’re unpleasant, don’t ever repress emotions.
Eat a clean and healthy diet and tune in to the feelings of your body. Doing this will put you more in touch with your “gut feelings.” Learn to trust those.
Set intentions regularly. Always consciously think about the intentions of your actions before doing anything.
Stay open and receptive to signs and messages from the universe. Take them seriously and believe that everything the universe presents you with is for a reason.
Singer is sharing his story because he believes we should teach and learn from one another, and this book was itself an act of surrender. He says your life doesn’t have to resemble his. Everyone can apply these principles in ways that make sense in the context of their own life. So now we’ll turn to Singer’s story, beginning with the catalyst that led him down his remarkable life path.
Before Singer had his insights about surrendering to the flow of the universe, he was a typical college student whose annoying inner voice led him to meditation.
His surrender story begins in Gainesville, Florida in 1970. He describes his younger self as a “hippie” who was less than serious about his education and for some time lived in a Volkswagen van. He didn’t have a clear vision for his life and felt aimless at times. But a single event set his life on a whole new trajectory that he’s remained on to this day. This was an otherwise unremarkable experience, and yet it had a profound and permanent effect on his life.
During a conversation with his brother-in-law, an awkward silence caused Singer to mentally search for conversational topics to fill the lull. He then noticed that he was doing that in his mind, and found himself reflecting on his own thought process. This was the first time he’d ever consciously observed his own internal monologue, and he became fascinated with exploring that further. After that conversation, Singer began to regularly and consciously observe his own thoughts and to reflect on the distinction between his unconscious mental chatter and the part of himself that was noticing the chatter. He had the sense that his true self was the one recognizing the voice, not the chattering voice itself, and the more he noticed the chatter, the more he became annoyed by it and wanted to silence it.
(Shortform note: Buddhism makes the distinction between your thinking mind and your observing mind. Both of these are parts of your mind, but the mind that observes the thoughts is the one we’re less in touch with. Mark Manson, the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, says in order to deal with negative emotions like fear and anxiety, we must learn to disidentify with the thinking mind. In other words, don’t think of those fearful thoughts as you; just recognize them as being there in your mind and then let them go.)
After a conversation about this battle with his internal monologue, a friend gave Singer a book on Buddhism called The Three Pillars of Zen. He was amazed to find that the book discussed these very concepts he’d been pondering. It explained that meditation is a method for quieting one’s mental chatter and creating a more peaceful internal experience. So, Singer set out to learn to meditate. This became the driving force of his life from that day forward.
Taming the Monkey Mind
This mental chatter is sometimes referred to in Buddhism as the “monkey mind” because it’s like a restless monkey swinging constantly from branch to branch (moving from thought to thought). This constant movement renders us unable to concentrate and have mental peace and stillness. But, as Singer would come to realize, we can’t banish the monkey entirely. We must learn how to train it so it behaves in a tamer way and learn to live peacefully with it. This is the primary goal of meditation in Zen Buddhism.
In addition to classic sitting meditation, some other methods you might use to tame the monkey mind are:
Moving meditations, such as yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong
Avoidance of stimulants that can agitate the monkey mind, such as caffeine, sugar, and alcohol.
Listening to music with binaural beats
Singer initially approached meditation as a tool for disciplining his mind, and he was fairly successful at it. But he eventually came to realize that meditation also involves a process of self-realization, the experience of deeply knowing one's true self. (Shortform note: In Mindfulness in Plain English, Henepola Gunaratana says that through the practice of mindfulness meditation you can become more deeply aware of the negative emotions you tend to repress. By doing so, you can learn to detach from them and let them go, rather than having them obscure your true self.)
The techniques Singer had learned from The Three Pillars of Zen involved sitting quietly, observing his breath, and mentally repeating the sound “mu.” He began doing this for a few minutes a day, then gradually increased the time commitment until he was in the habit of meditating for hours every day. On occasion, during meditation sessions, he had intense feelings of universal love that were more deeply fulfilling than anything else he’d ever experienced. He soon recognized that he wanted his life to be devoted to spiritual practice, so he could access this feeling regularly.
Singer decided the best way to accomplish this was to have as much solitude as possible. He bought a plot of land in the forest of Alachua, Florida where he built a small home and meditation sanctuary. At the time, his goal was to have complete solitude, to be able to devote himself entirely to his internal work.
He established a rigorous schedule of rising at 3:00 am and practicing meditation for several hours every day. After practicing this regimen in solitude on his land for the next year and a half, he noticed his monkey mind becoming more disciplined. But he was frustrated that he still struggled to consistently achieve that blissful experience of universal love. Then another book came to him: Autobiography of a Yogi opened Singer’s eyes to the fact that there was more to a spiritual life than just mental discipline. He was lacking self-realization, a deeper understanding of his own mind.
This book’s insights led him to conclude that it would be impossible to silence his inner voice unless he really understood that voice as part of himself. Up until this point he’d been so focused on just getting rid of the chatter, he wasn’t paying any attention to the content of it. If he was going to permanently quiet his mind, he'd need to figure out why it was so noisy. This would allow him to get to the root of the issue. So he shifted his goal from trying to eliminate his inner voice to trying to actually listen to it.
Autobiography of a Yogi on Self-Realization
Paramahansa Yogananda, the author of Autobiography of a Yogi, describes self-realization as knowing yourself well enough to understand that you are not your ego (the chattering voice), but rather that you are one with God. He teaches the importance of self-realization through kriya yoga, which focuses on breath control in order to achieve self-control and attain “God-realization,” or union with the divine.
Yogananda is sometimes referred to as the “Father of Yoga in the West” because he was one of the first Hindu yogis to bring yoga to America when he arrived in Boston in 1920. His teachings emphasized the unity of all the world’s religions, and that the benefits of yoga didn’t depend on religious belief. He created a series of lessons he called the Self-Realization Fellowship and is said to have taught and initiated over 100,000 people into this fellowship in his lifetime. In 1946, after decades of teaching and spreading yoga and meditation, Yogananda wrote his life story, Autobiography of a Yogi.
When Singer began paying closer attention to the content of his mental chatter, he realized that his own preferences were getting in the way, and he’d need to set those aside in order to allow life to flow organically. This would be the first step in his life-changing experiment with surrender.
Through close observation, Singer found that his mind was constantly making judgments about what was good or bad, what he liked and disliked, and was trying to control circumstances to suit his preferences. For example, he’d tend to reject social invitations or requests for favors because he preferred to be left alone. He’d actually try to control his environment to limit his interaction with other people. He also noticed his approach to everyday activities would be influenced by his thoughts about the weather. If he thought the weather was “good,” he’d have a positive outlook. If he thought it was “bad,” he’d think negatively.
After contemplating this, he concluded that constantly attempting to control life is futile. Life has its own direction of flow and trying to resist it is like trying to swim against the flow of a river. This is why we’re often so frustrated—we’re always trying to make life go the way we want, but our wants and preferences are not always aligned with what life wants to do. Singer concluded that his judgments and preferences might be getting in the way of what the universe wanted for him. So, he decided to experiment to see what would happen if he began ignoring his likes and dislikes and just accepted whatever life brought to him.
Surrender to the Now
In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle says our inner voice is our ego that’s always analyzing, judging, and trying to control everything. This is exactly the insight Singer had. Tolle says we tend to think our statuses, such as our jobs, social roles, and our preferences, are what define us. But these are not the true essence of our being, and identifying with them keeps us from being fully present and authentic in our lives.
Like Singer, he says we need to stop judging things as good or bad, and simply accept things as they are. Tolle explains that judging something as bad makes us want to reject and resist it, and that keeps us from being in the present. Tolle’s concept of “surrendering to the now” is aligned with Singer’s experiment to allow life to happen and stop resisting things based on likes and dislikes.
Because trying to control external circumstances to suit our preferences is the way we’re accustomed to living, Singer knew this would be a difficult challenge. So, he started practicing with something simple—the weather. He’d notice his judgments about it, such as “I don’t like this rain” and then he’d let go and accept that the rainy weather was just a fact and he couldn’t control it. By doing this, he was able to detach from his annoyance about “bad” weather and just enjoy the day regardless.
(Shortform note: Stoic philosophy, originating in ancient Greece, teaches careful control of emotions, as they arise from false judgments about the world. In The Daily Stoic, Ryan Holiday says the foundation of Stoic thought is the premise that because we can’t control much in life, we must learn to control how we react to life. In this worldview, the most important tool we have is reason. If we think rationally and calmly through situations, we’ll be much more at peace and live a more virtuous life than someone who is always at the whim of their emotions.)
After success with the weather, Singer applied this to the rest of his life by detaching from his personal preferences and just saying yes to whatever the universe put in front of him. When someone asked him to do something, or an opportunity presented itself, he’d notice any mental resistance or urge to reject the situation. Then he’d set that resistance aside and say yes instead. Since resistance and judgment made up the bulk of his mental chatter, by giving no attention to it he was finally able to silence that inner voice.
Singer describes his simple two-step process to practicing surrender:
For example, let’s say a friend asks you to go along on a trip with them, and you’re undecided. It sounds fun, but you’re also busy, and you don’t really like flying. If you take your preferences out of the equation, it would be up to your friend, and you’d go. So go. Life is putting this in front of you. You never know what other opportunities might present themselves as a result of this trip.
(Shortform note: This is in contrast with a lot of recent self-help advice urging people to learn to say no. In The Big Leap, Gay Hendricks says that you shouldn’t spend time doing anything that doesn’t enhance your state of fulfillment. He says we tend to spend too much time doing things we don’t really want to do out of a sense of obligation, and we should resist that. This is in conflict with Singer’s advice to set aside what you like and want, and trust that life is presenting this opportunity to you, even if it might not feel personally “good” to you.)
Now that Singer had made the commitment to surrender, how would it actually play out in his life? In this section, we’ll discuss some of the major lessons he learned during this 40-year practice. We’ll describe some of the specific life circumstances to which Singer surrendered and show how each resulted in expanded opportunities and growth.
One of Singer’s first chances to practice surrender came in the form of a teaching opportunity. Through a series of decisions to say yes when his mind was saying no, he would learn that the universe knew better than him what was meant for his life.
When Singer became fully immersed in his meditation practice, he lost interest in pursuing his graduate degree and decided not to finish it. But when his professors urged him to continue, he applied his method for surrender by discarding his preference (not wanting to continue school) and finishing his degree. This led to a colleague asking him to teach classes at a local community college. He didn’t want to teach; he just wanted to be alone on his land, lost in meditation. So again he was tempted to say no. But he reminded himself it wasn’t about what he wanted. Life was presenting this opportunity, so he surrendered and said yes despite great mental resistance.
Go With the Flow
The idea of surrendering to what life wants mirrors Deepak Chopra’s assertion that true success comes from aligning with the spiritual energy of the universe that’s flowing through you. Chopra says trying to control external events in our lives is based in fear and gives us anxiety. However, when you connect with the spiritual realm, your life will naturally begin to flow with the energy of the universe, and this will bring you true success—a joyful life.
Jay Shetty says this is why monks are the most peaceful, happy people in the world. They exist at all times in this state of harmonious flow with the energy of life. In Think Like a Monk, Shetty offers some advice on how to experience this flow. Some strategies he suggests are:
Explore your fears, asking yourself why you fear what you do. Continue asking “why?” until you’ve identified the deepest root of the fear. This will ultimately help you detach from those fears, and then let go of the need to try to control your environment.
Practice forgiveness and gratitude. Release the negative feelings you’re holding on to from the past, and shift your focus to what you’re grateful for in the present.
When you confront challenges in life, instead of thinking about what you need to do, think about how you need to be. For example, instead of thinking, “I need to confront this person and explain what they did wrong,” think, “I need to be patient and understanding in this interaction.”
Singer also taught his classes with an attitude of surrender, allowing the conversation to flow in whatever direction it naturally went. As a result, his classes became wildly popular with students. Word of mouth spread and his classes filled to capacity. People on and around campus took interest in what he had to say and sought him out for his knowledge. Because he spoke of his meditation practice in his classes, people began coming to his land to meditate with him. Of course, being a person who craved solitude, Singer didn’t initially want this. But he realized this was a particularly important thing to surrender to because others were seeking out the kind of spiritual experiences he’d been having. He reasoned that this was clearly something the universe wanted to happen, so he allowed it to happen.
The next turn of events presented perhaps the most difficult challenge for surrender: Singer went out of town for a few weeks, and when he returned he found a friend of his, Sandy, building a house for herself on his land. Sandy had been coming to the land regularly to join him for meditation and had decided she wanted to live there. Without even asking him, she had just started building. He was initially shocked. His mind instinctively rejected this possibility and reeled with confusion and indignance. But he was adept at controlling his responses by now, so he walked away and went to quietly contemplate this. He went through his surrender process in his mind. If it weren’t about his preferences, what would happen? Sandy would build her house on his land.
It didn’t take long for him to decide he had no choice but to surrender. He had made the commitment. So, he calmly accepted it, picked up his tools, and began to help her build. Not only was this the most difficult act of surrender so far, but it was also perhaps the most crucial because of what it led to.
Setting Healthy Boundaries
Although we can reasonably assume that Singer doesn’t believe you should allow people to take advantage of you, some of the examples of surrender he describes could be seen as having a lack of healthy boundaries by the standards of some current self-help advice. In fact, some experts say setting boundaries and saying no are essential to pursuing your highest contribution in life.
In Essentialism, Greg McKeown says that in our modern technology-driven culture, boundaries have slowly disintegrated to the point that we’re expected to be available to everyone at all times. McKeown says you must push back against people who don’t respect your boundaries, because such people make their problems your problems, and they take advantage of you.
It’s likely that most self-help experts today would consider building a house on someone else’s land without permission a serious boundary violation.
When Sandy had her house built, she began bringing friends around regularly for meditation sessions. Singer also didn’t want this to happen, of course, but he went with the flow. The group grew and grew until a spiritual community had formed on his land. He came to realize that this was meant to be, and none of it would have happened if he had made decisions based on his personal preferences.
Singer’s next lesson was that he needed a bigger purpose. His ego had drawn him toward meditation and yoga because of what it could do for him. But truly surrendering to life would mean acting in service of something greater than himself.
Since a regular community was now practicing meditation and yoga on his property, with him as the leading figure, Singer began seeking out spiritual gurus for their wisdom. By 1974, a young woman named Donna had moved into Sandy’s house; Donna urged Singer to contact a popular Indian guru named Baba Muktananda to ask him to visit Gainesville. Reluctantly, Singer surrendered and said yes. In the winter of 1975, he and Donna organized a weekend retreat for spiritual seekers to come to hear Baba speak. It was wildly successful. The venue was filled to capacity. Ultimately, as a result of this surrender, Baba Muktananda became Singer’s guru, and Donna eventually became his wife.
One of the most profound lessons Singer would learn from Baba was about the importance of acts of service. Observing how Baba devoted his life to serving others inspired Singer to embrace all the events that had transpired to change his life, because he had allowed life to do what it wanted, in the service of others. He realized he must view his whole life as an act of service.
The Servant’s Heart
In The Purpose Driven Life, Pastor Rick Warren gives a Christian perspective on the concept of life as an act of service. He says everyone has a God-given purpose in life, and your life should be centered on discovering and living that purpose intended for you.
Warren describes the five characteristics of a servant’s heart. Although they’re derived from a different faith tradition, these characteristics and principles align well with what Singer learned about service from his guru.
Availability: A life of service requires you to keep your daily schedule as flexible as possible, in case an opportunity for service should arise. When you are needed for something that serves your purpose, you should be able to put down other things and attend to that act of service.
Perceptiveness: A servant stays open to the needs of others at all times and notices moments when they can be of service. Pay attention to the little things around you, and look for opportunities to help others.
Dedication: Always put your whole heart and effort into your service and do the best you can. Remember that no act of service is too small.
Reliability: A servant is always dependable and trustworthy. People who know you should always know they can count on you.
Humility: The true servant doesn’t serve for their own glory or gain. Remember, you are doing this in service to a higher power, not for your own benefit.
The next turn of events would further reinforce for Singer how devotion to a life of service can result in extraordinary events. His next act of surrender would result in his most beloved lifelong project and the embodiment of his life as service: the Temple of the Universe.
After the success of the previous retreat, Singer was asked to host another guru for a second retreat—an Indian saint called Ma Yoga Shakti, or Mataji. Again he mentally resisted, and again he ultimately surrendered and said yes. When Mataji arrived, Singer took her on a walk around his property. At one point on the walk, Mataji stopped suddenly and told him she felt a holy presence in that spot. She then said something that caught him completely off guard: She told him she could foresee that there would one day be a temple in that very spot. His immediate mental response was “absolutely not!” but by now he was able to quickly realize it wasn’t up to him, and he reminded himself of his new commitment to making his life an act of service.
(Shortform note: Ma Yoga Shakti, born in Varanasi, India in 1927, devoted her life to the service of humanity, and particularly to women. She was one of the first prominent female Hindu gurus and was a major contributor to the spread of yoga to the West. She died in 2011.)
Within months, Singer and his community began building The Temple of the Universe on his property. The first services were held in the Temple in the fall of 1975, and they continue to be held there regularly to this day. (Shortform note: As of 2022, the Temple of the Universe offers weekly Sunday services delivered by Singer, as well as meditation and chanting ceremonies, and free twice-weekly yoga classes.)
Next, life would have a lesson for Singer about wholeheartedness. A new interest in computer programming would teach him that if he dove into something with his whole heart and soul, life would reward him accordingly.
On a fall day in 1978, Singer’s life took an unexpected turn in a Radio Shack store. He was making a purchase when something caught his eye: It was one of the first computers made for personal use, and he was instantly fascinated by it. As he began playing around with the computer, he had an intense feeling that he needed to learn more about this technology. A few days later he bought the computer, having no idea what he was going to do with it, but knowing he needed to listen to that feeling.
When Singer got the computer home, he became completely absorbed in it, almost as if it were another form of meditation. This new fascination led to him learning everything he could about computer programming, and he taught himself how to write programs to help him with some of his business tasks. He spent every spare minute of his day diving into programming. He then showed some of his programs to the manager at Radio Shack, and from there he began getting requests from others who wanted programs for a variety of tasks. Of course, he had to say yes to them.
Before long, Singer had a new business called Personalized Programming. This was Singer’s first experience with significant financial success, and it allowed for the expansion of his most important endeavor, the Temple. And he realized it happened because he had put his whole heart and soul into pursuing what the universe presented.
Keep Your Spiritual Heart Open
In his previous book, The Untethered Soul, Singer discusses how we all have an inner spiritual energy we can channel to give us motivation, drive, and inspiration. If we’re connected to that, we can put our whole heart and soul into anything we do. But we have to remain open to it and work through any blockages we have.
Singer says this universal energy is like a force field that permeates you and everything in life. Everyone has access to it, but we have bad habits and negative patterns, largely from past life experiences, that impede the flow of this energy through us. He offers some advice for keeping your spiritual heart open:
Observe shifts in your energy toward tightness or negativity. Notice when anger, jealousy, and other negative emotions come up.
When you feel this happening, allow yourself to feel those emotions, then relax, breathe through them, and let them go.
Remind yourself that those disturbances are not you. You are the one noticing the disturbances.
Practice this regularly, and notice how it shifts your energy to a feeling of lightness and openness.
By becoming more adept at keeping your spiritual heart open, you’ll feel more motivation and inspiration in your life and will be better equipped for putting your heart and soul into your life’s work.
As the programming business grew and became more financially lucrative, Singer was able to buy pieces of property adjacent to his current plot and expand the grounds and buildings for the Temple. Each time he was able to amass some savings, another plot would coincidentally come up for sale. In this way, he was able to support the Temple with his programming business.
By 1980, as the result of a request that he surrendered to, Singer had designed a specialty software called The Medical Manager that ended up being used by medical offices nationwide. Singer began hiring employees and creating office space on his expanded land, and by the end of the 1980s, The Medical Manager Corporation was a multimillion-dollar business. Its offices, the Temple, and Singer’s new house now sat on his 170-acres property. Throughout all of this, Singer maintained his firm commitment to daily meditation practice and the Temple. He never relented on his commitment to surrender, service, and wholeheartedness.
(Shortform note: Although Singer’s business led him to financial abundance and high social status, these weren’t necessarily his goals. Rather, they were byproducts of his devotion to service and surrender. In his book, The Seat of the Soul, Gary Zukav distinguishes between the pursuit of external vs. internal (or authentic) power. He says you can only experience authentic, internal power when you let go of materialistic pursuits. In order to move in the direction of authentic power, Zukav says you should embrace prayer and faith, and listen to the spiritual guidance that comes to you in prayer.)
The expansion and growth of his business and land continued throughout the next decade. By early 2000, The Medical Manager was valued at $3.5 billion when it merged with WebMD. This was beyond anything Singer had ever dreamed of. But life would have one more important lesson for him.
After many years of wild success, Singer was forced to confront the greatest adversity he’d ever faced, and it taught him that even our obstacles and adversity can be used for good. He describes this life event as the final necessary step in dissolving his ego.
(Shortform note: Ryan Holiday says in The Obstacle is the Way that learning to see obstacles as empowering opportunities is fundamental to developing a Stoic mindset. He says any difficult situation will have an opportunity hidden within it, and it’s up to you to discover what it is and take advantage of it. In line with Singer’s experiment with letting go of his preferences and value judgments, Holiday says that judging situations as good or bad creates suffering. Situations themselves are neither inherently good nor bad—it’s how we respond to them that determines how they’ll affect us.)
In September 2003, Singer received an unexpected phone call from his attorney telling him he needed to come to the office right away. The FBI was raiding his business complex. Confused, Singer rushed to the office to find a full-scale raid in process. The agents were taking everything—from computers to disk drives, to every paper file in the office. Singer was told that the company was being investigated for fraud.
The next several years of Singer’s life would be tied up with lawyers, judges, and court hearings. From the beginning, he insisted he had no knowledge of any fraud and had never done anything inappropriate. But when he asked his lawyer what the chances were of the charges being dropped, the lawyer told him it would take a miracle. So Singer decided he must believe a miracle would happen.
This period of his life would be a difficult test of Singer’s inner strength and his resolve to let go of control. He reminded himself of his commitment to surrender, and he practiced radical acceptance of the situation, resolving to simply tell the truth and believe that justice would prevail. But he actually went one step further than acceptance and surrender: He decided he would use the situation as an opportunity to deepen his spiritual practice and his commitment to service. He stepped down as CEO of the company and used the time to write his book, The Untethered Soul, which would become a best seller and have an enormously positive effect on many people.
(Shortform note: The Untethered Soul was published in 2007. Its primary purpose is in teaching you how to live in the present moment and release painful thoughts of the past and worries of the future. Considering Singer’s legal situation at the time, writing a book about how to avoid stressing about future outcomes is quite apt.)
In January 2011, more than seven years after the FBI raid, a judge ruled that the fraud was committed by a few employees without Singer’s knowledge. The case against Singer was dropped. He had received his miracle. Upon reflection, Singer ultimately realized this kind of adversity was exactly what he needed to solidify his belief in surrendering completely to the universe and to learn how to use difficulty as an opportunity. After the outcome of that case, when he looked back on the 40-year results of his experiment with surrender, he knew this book was his next task.
Practice Radical Acceptance
Singer embraced the concept of “radical acceptance” during this difficult phase of his life. In her book on the topic, psychologist and spiritual teacher Tara Brach says accepting the painful experiences of life goes against our conditioning—we’re so used to resisting and avoiding pain and suffering. But she says when we learn to see and accept ourselves and our lives exactly as they are, it frees us. Rather than worrying about the future, regretting the past, or trying to control the future, we can just relax and accept what is.
Brach says this process involves both your mind and your heart: You should use your mind to recognize and accurately identify what is happening in your life so you have a clear understanding of the problem. Then, use your heart to embrace your life and self with compassion.
Singer says the first step in practicing surrender is to set aside your personal preferences, which can be challenging when making decisions. Think through your own process of decision-making and consider whether it would be beneficial to set your preferences aside in the future.
Describe a recent experience when someone asked you to do something and you said no. Why did you decide to say no instead of yes?
List all of the personal preferences that went into your decision to say no. For example, what did you want or not want to do, or what did you think you would like or not like about doing that thing?
What might you have done differently if you discarded those personal preferences? What do you think might have happened if you had said yes in this situation?