Just over four years ago I hit my deep and hard bottom of what I have now come to understand was my crisis of meaning, purpose, and Spirit (or lack thereof). By Grace I found my bottom through a daily spiritual practice (sadhana) of prayer, yoga and meditation. I say by Grace because I had managed to go 48 years without having even tried yoga, prayer, or mediation prior to a few months before all of this. It is not at all clear why I woke up on December 9th, 2019, and decided that for the next 90 days I needed to get up at 3:30am and take a cold shower and then do a 2.5-hour morning practice that would finish at precisely 6:30am each morning. But that’s what I did, and I ended up doing it for 7 months without a break. As a side note, I doubt I could do this today as it sounds totally overwhelming. But there was an energy driving me then that would not let me stop for any reason. I now understand that this is what a spiritual awakening feels like.
About 60 days into this daily practice a friend came to visit me, and after witnessing the very noticeable shift that was taking place with me, he shared with me that my experience reminded him of Michael Singer’s journey in the Surrender Experiment. This was to become the first of many synchronicities that have become common place now.
“In The Surrender Experiment, Michael A. Singer tells the extraordinary story of what happened when, after a deep spiritual awakening, he decided to relinquish his personal fears and desires and simply let life unfold before him”.
After reading Singer’s book I remember experiencing a ‘knowing’ that this book was meant to come to me at that exact moment, and I was also meant to try the surrender experiment. Maybe even a feeling that I dreamed up both Singer and his book but that is a topic for another day. Now, almost four years later I feel that I can confirm the success of the surrender experiment much like Singer did. It was not an overnight process but, with practice, I have learned to let go of my expectations of what the future is supposed to look like and to let go of my limited belief that I know what I need, or other people need. I have given up fighting anyone or anything, and instead I use my energy to try and understand what is trying to unfold in any situation and to get myself aligned with it. Surrender to it.
Much like Singer, this experiment has taken me down a path I could never have envisioned nor would have ever followed if I had continued to run on my own conditioned based self-will. The broader flow of life has taken me down an unexpected spiritual path towards Christ consciousness, it has sprung me into a brand new and fulfilling career at the age of 50, it has illuminated the joys of engaging in self-less service and it has delivered me into a marriage that is nothing short of Divine Union.
Most critically, however, surrender has shown me that there are so many more chapters to be written and so many more blessings to come in life and I don’t need to do anything except be willing and open to receive them, regardless of how they are presented. I have stopped labeling things as good or bad and instead just accept that this is the way it is and just love it all.
Krishnamurti had a secret to happiness, and it was “I don’t mind what happens”. I will modify that slightly and claim my own secret to happiness is “I can’t wait to see what happens next!”
The Way
