Surrendering to the universe

Trust your gut.

That was the gist of The Surrender Project by Mickey Singer.

It was an autobiography of a man who discovered something important early in his life. His mind and heart were different things.

His mind was the chatter of personal likes and dislikes. The voice that always had an opinion about everything.

But one day, he said he was hearing it talk.

He could stand back from it and hear it.

And thus began his journey into meditation.

Now, I can't say I'm into meditation myself, but his description of the process of becoming connected with his consciousness was interesting.

With practice, he was able to quiet this voice in his head and go with the flow of the universe.

The book was about surrendering to the universe.

Over forty years, he showed how he maintained a daily meditation practice and life as a hippie.

Over that time, he was a professor, a home builder, business owner, founded a temple, became a programmer and eventually built one of the biggest software companies in the medical software space.

All of it driven by following the flow of his intuition.

Even at the end of the book, where he discovers one of the challenges of the modern world, he is able to lean on his intuition to get through it.

Reading the book, you can recognize situations in your own life where you were presented with a decision. It wasn't always a logical decision. But when you embraced the intuition, it seemed to work.

And when you went against your intuition, the outcome was less than ideal.

I was recalling a few moments like that after I put the book down.

What was interesting about the book is that it was neither preachy nor hard to read. It was, in fact, hard to put down once I got started. Getting the opportunity to see inside a man's heart as he moves through life is a rare thing.

You will notice what isn't there as much as what is.

It was life without all the boring stuff.

Just a series of events that presented themselves just at the right time, under the right circumstances when he was in need. He never seemed to worry about it.

Periodically, you could see where he was questioning his judgment, but he always chose to go with the flow.

Now, what is also clear is that there is something important here.

That it's not just deciding to do something believing that it's intuition when it isn't

The secret is in the distinction.

The quieting of the mind and looking to the heart to give you the signal.

This is reminiscent of the Peace Process, a technique designed to give people peace from emotional turmoil, as taught by Christian Mickelsen.

The idea behind it is that what people fear is not the outcome of a situation or decision but rather, they fear how they will feel about the outcome.

The feeling becomes a fuel demanding attention.

And when you refuse to give it attention, you feel a knot inside.

Anxiety. Pain. Tightness.

By going to that place, focusing your attention on it, and giving it love and attention, you put a match to the fuel waiting to be used up.

But to do this, you have to get out of your mind and into your body.

To release the fear, you have to focus on the place where it's being stored.

With attention and love, the feeling created by storing fear is dissipated.

Now, I never would have believed this had I not tried it myself. It was a remarkable experience.

It's something anyone can do, but even better when being guided.

And this brings us back to Mickey Singer.

His book was mentioned by the practitioner of this technique called the peace process. The process requires you to surrender to fear.

To let the fear have your full attention where it exists and follow it where it travels around the body.

Not surrender as in give up, but not to fight it so you can give it the time it requires and let it go.

At that moment, you are that much closer to the flow of the universe.

And when you can let your fears go through surrender, you are that much closer to getting the life you want and deserve.