Name: The Surrender Experiment
Rating: 3.3125 (16 reviews)
ISBN: 9780804141109

Michael A. Singer

Shares stories from the author's pursuit of enlightenment, from his years as a hippie introvert and successes as a computer engineer through his work in humanitarian efforts, counseling readers on how to navigate confusing aspects in the spiritual journey.

My Journey Into Life's Perfection

The Surrender Experiment

Alan

For someone who has built their entire life's narrative out of meditation and surrendering to the will of nature, Michael Singer sure does have a big ego.
In fact, this book is stuffed full of small unnecessary comments about how brilliant and extra-special he is, even despite the experiment needing that not to be the case. How he was amazingly clever at school without any extra work needed, how he could write algorithms so much better than anyone else all in one go.
It's not that these details are unbelievable; it's that they are unimportant to the story, and even in contradiction to it. And what is the motivation for including such superfluous self-aggrandising comments?

With these small but plentiful offhand comments, Michael Singer lost my trust. And this meant I don't know if I believe that he is as spiritually enlightened as he says he is, if he is as good a person as he implies he is, if he is as honest as he should be. I have no reason to believe he wasn't guilty of the fraud he was accused of, and I have no reason to be assured that this whole book isn't systemically selective and the literary incarnation of confirmation bias.

On the other hand, this was a book that had an important message that I needed to receive right now—that may end up guiding many of my decisions in the future. And the repetitive examples worked well to illustrate the point.

Tuago

I couldn't finish the book so 2 stars. It felt like a narcissistic account of how much money and luck the author got by following a dumb idea of surrendering to everyone else's wishes.

Suzy Dean

** spoiler alert **
           It’s my fault for having expectations. I expected this book to have the same amount of meaningful and understandable nuggets of wisdom as The Untethered Soul which changed my life and the way I relate to it. This was a real biography that quickly became very predictable. He was constantly shown opportunities that made him uncomfortable, he said yes anyway, the perfect person showed up at the perfect time, and the perfect amount of money showed up just in time. It quickly became redundant and boring. If you are looking into a glimpse of his life and experiences, it was great! If you’re looking for a self-help book, not this one!

Diana Platgalve

In short: this book is not favouring reason as a guide for life rather embracing a spiritual practice to accept what comes.

The author is giving us an insight of his journey of being open to the circumstances and embracing to what is happening, ignoring, what we would call, our preferences of like and dislike. His journey of trusting life to present him the necessary for his life is deeply spiritual. 

He notes that the battle between the individual will and the reality of life unfolding around us ends up consuming our lives. Once you’re ready to let go of yourself, life becomes your teacher. Not allowing your personal preferences to make decisions for you, instead of allowing reality of life to determine where you are going was his announced way. However, the book was quite contradictory as he declined some offers he got along the way. 🤷‍♀️

Victoria

Michael A. Singer, author of The Untethered Soul, tells the extraordinary story of what happened when, after a deep spiritual awakening, he decided to let go of his personal preferences and simply let life call the shots. As Singer takes you on this great experiment and journey into life's perfection, the events that transpire will both challenge your deepest assumptions about life and inspire you to look at your own life in a radically different way. Spirituality is meant to bring about harmony and peace. But the diversity of our philosophies, beliefs, concepts, and views about the soul often leads to confusion. To reconcile the noise that clouds spirituality, Michael Singer combines accounts of his own life journey to enlightenment - from his years as a hippie-loner to his success as a computer program engineer to his work in spiritual and humanitarian efforts - with lessons on how to put aside conflicting beliefs, let go of worries, and transform misdirected desires. Singer provides a road map to a new way of living not in the moment, but to exist in a state of perpetual happiness.

The Surrender Experiment My Journey Into Life's Perfection

Reviews

Highlights