Lesson 135: If I defend myself I am attacked
I am rereading Michael Singer’s book, The Surrender Experiment. I read it a few years ago and it truly touched my heart. In the book, he describes how he came to lead what he calls a life of surrender.
The rules of this experiment, he writes, are 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 would use each opportunity to simply let him go and surrender to what life was presenting me.”
Seems simple enough, right? Singer struggled with his experiment, though, as the book chronicles, but he learned what today’s lesson seeks to teach: stop planning your life and let it unfold.
When we make plans, we base them on past experience and future expectations. If we allow ego to go around making plans for us, then nothing new will ever come into our lives, and that’s exactly how the ego wants it. Living the same story over and over again is its stock and trade and if it can keep us trapped defending all we’ve planned and worked for and gained over the years, it can keep us on its competition and fear-based treadmill.
If, instead, we can surrender, if we can stop planning our lives and allow the Holy to present us with all the opportunities we need, and meet all of our needs at the same time, we will find the life that we’re truly being called to live.
Singer’s life has been amazing. He wanted to build a tiny meditation hut on some land he bought in Gainesville, Florida, in the 1970s, and it has become an international retreat center called the Temple of the Universe. It was never Singer’s plan to open such a place. He just wanted to meditate in the woods, but when he began his surrender experiment, life brought him opportunity after opportunity to serve others – including those in prison.
He began a building business and eventually went on to found a medical software company that was later bought out by WebMD. He also was brought up on racketeering charges after a scandal rocked his company. While awaiting trial, he wrote his book, The Untethered Soul. Spoiler alert: The charges were eventually dropped against him, but Singer says he had fully surrendered to the possibility of going to prison and knew that if he ended up there, the Universe would have a job waiting for him there as well.
I, personally, would have been worried sick awaiting trial on charges I knew I was innocent of, but Singer gives us a model of how to dispel the worrisome voice that demands we defend this body at all costs. By remaining in the present moment and saying yes whenever the Universe put opportunities and challenges before him, Singer has lived the life he was meant to live, not the one he wanted to live. He is much happier for it, he says.
We are invited to begin our own surrender experiment in this lesson: “Try not to shape this day as you believe would benefit you most. For you cannot conceive of all the happiness that comes to you without your planning,” this lesson instructs.
When I meditate on my life, I see that I am not living the life I wanted. There were events, opportunities and challenges that foiled my best plans for life. I’m grateful for each of them, because it has led me to a place I never would have chosen for myself, and I am happier for it.
This lesson will become a daily practice for me. I will refrain from trying to plan my day, or my life, and simply allow it to unfold. So far, Universe has provided me with everything I need, and a lot of what I have desired. There is no evidence that any of that will cease to occur. This lesson calls us to trust the present moment, ignore the rantings and desires of the ego, and live our lives in complete surrender to the flow of life.
Only in this way, Hafiz says, can we truly move on to our glory:
What can you see of existence’s attempt to honor
you, when you keep turning back to a time
where some event you seemed to take part in may
cause you to lower your head, and whisper
again … I am sorry?
We are waiting for you to arrive at your own
coronation, but you really can’t accept the crown
with any regrets in your past. Where does
that then leave you … in line for the throne?
What can you see of every object’s attempt
to pay homage to you, because of your divine
lineage, if you are stuck in any kind of
confessional?
All happenings needed to be; accept that, my
dear. Ask for any forgiveness one more time if you must,
then move on to your glory and sublime reign.
Photo by Curtis MacNewton on Unsplash