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The Surrender Experiment
What It’s About
What happens when you stop trying to control your life. Michael Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, tells the autobiographical story of a forty-year experiment in surrender, saying yes to whatever life presented next, and how that produced an unlikely billion-dollar company. Practical mysticism that reads like a thriller.
Three Key Ideas
Observing the Inner Voice
Singer discovered that the mind's constant commentary is something you can watch from a distance, which means you are not the voice itself.
Saying Yes to Life
Replacing personal preference with full engagement in whatever appears produced outcomes far beyond anything Singer could have planned or designed.
Resistance as Suffering
Most pain comes not from circumstances themselves but from the mind's insistence that those circumstances should be different.
Read a Sample
The Surrender Experiment
In the winter of 1970, Michael Alan Singer was sitting in a room in Gainesville, Florida, talking with his brother-in-law, when the conversation ran dry. A silence opened up. In that silence, Singer noticed something he'd never consciously registered before: his own mind racing to fill the gap. He watched himself scanning for topics, hunting for something to say, narrating the moment even as it happened. He had a thought about his thoughts. That tiny loop of self-observation, awareness noticing awareness, shook something loose in him that never settled back into place.
He was twenty-two. He was working on a PhD in economics at the University of Florida, and he had an ordinary academic future ahead of him. Then, in the space of one quiet moment, none of that felt like enough anymore. He wanted to know what that observer was. He wanted to find out who exactly was watching the voice in his head, because if he could observe the voice, he clearly wasn't the voice. So who was he?
That question drove one of the more unusual lives in modern memoir. Over the next four decades, Singer would refuse to let personal preference guide him. He'd say yes to what life offered instead of bargaining with it. He'd sit in the woods and meditate for hours every day. He'd build a spiritual community by accident, and then, also by accident, a healthcare software company that eventually merged with WebMD in a deal valued at roughly five billion dollars. He'd survive an FBI raid on his property and federal fraud charges that dragged on for years. And through all of it, he'd insist that none of it was planned. The whole story, he says, came from choosing, again and again, to get out of life's way.
Who It’s For
- Anyone who feels trapped by constant mental chatter and wants to understand what lies beneath it.
- Anyone who has built a life around personal goals and wonders whether there is a less exhausting way to navigate uncertainty.
- Anyone drawn to spiritual practice but put off by teachings that ignore real-world stakes like money, community, and legal jeopardy.
- Anyone who wants a concrete, biographical account of how surrender and meditation intersect with running a company.
About the Author: Michael A. Singer
Michael A. Singer is the author of The Untethered Soul, one of the best-selling spiritual books of the past two decades. He holds a master's degree in economics and founded the Temple of the Universe, a nondenominational meditation community in Alachua, Florida, in 1975.
Singer also co-founded Medical Manager Health Systems, the most widely used physician practice management software in the United States during its era. The company merged with WebMD in a transaction valued at roughly five billion dollars. He has taught meditation and the principles behind his surrender practice for over fifty years.
