Michael Singer

I read Michael Singer's book "The Surrender Experiment" thanks to a recommendation from Nic. It had a huge impact on me.  Surrender is now a core spiritual value for me. I also read his book "The Untethered Soul" which I also found very powerful. 

Books that inspired me

Some favourite quotes

Just sit in the seat of awareness and never leave

• Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation.
• Now you are in your center of consciousness. You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.
• Consciousness is the highest word you will ever utter. There is nothing higher or deeper than consciousness. Consciousness is pure awareness.
• If you aren’t centered, your consciousness is just following whatever catches its attention.
• You are sitting inside the center of consciousness watching your personal TV show. But there are so many interesting objects distracting your consciousness that you can’t help but get drawn into them. It’s overwhelming. It’s three-dimensional. It’s all around you. All of your senses draw you in—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—as well as your feelings and your thoughts. But you are really sitting quietly inside looking out at all these objects.

Withdraw attention from and identification with the mind

• Withdraw your attention, and the thinking mind falls away.
• My sense of me no longer included the neurotic thought patterns that were passing in front of me.
• When your mind is disturbed, don’t ask, “What do I do about this?” Instead ask, “Who am I that notices this?”

Stay open and aware in a state of relaxed allowing (non-resistance)

• Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance.
• Your only way out is the witness. Just keep letting go by being aware that you are aware.
• Stop defining the disturbed mind as a negative experience; just see if you can relax behind it.

To stay happy, keep your heart open

• Most of all, keep your heart relaxed and  open.
• No matter what happens below you, just turn your eyes upward and relax your heart.
• The moment you feel a change, relax your shoulders and relax the area around your heart. The moment the energy moves, you simply relax and release.
• Every single time you relax and release, a piece of the pain leaves forever. Every time you resist and close, you are building up the pain inside.
• If you close around the pain and stop it from passing through, it will stay in you.
• The more open you remain, the more  energies and experiences are able to pass through you

In so doing, you are able to fully embrace the experiences of life

• Don’t be afraid of death. Let it free you. Let it encourage you to experience life.
• To see, to experience, and to honor is to participate in life instead of standing back and judging it.

Use your human energies and disturbances to awaken and transcend

• Awareness transcends what it is aware of.
• Now what used to hold you down becomes what wakes you up.
• That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up.

You now become aware of a universe behind your seat of consciousness

• When the drop of consciousness that knows itself as an individual drifts back far enough, it becomes like the drop that falls into the ocean. The Atman (Soul) falls into the Paramatman (Supreme Soul). The individual consciousness falls into the Universal Oneness. And that’s it.

This is how you know something about God. You become one with Him.

• Such a state exists; one can merge into the Universal Absolute. One can merge into God.
• If you move your search for God down to the mental level, somebody will dispute it. You can’t know God that way. It must come from actual experience. Michael Singer

This centred state of awareness is a state of freedom

• The only way to inner freedom is through the one who watches: the Self.
• To feel great love and freedom, to find the presence of God within you, all of this stored pain must go.
• Let go of the need to control everything with the mind
• Life is continuously changing, and if you’re trying to control it, you’ll never be able to fully live it.

Realise there is a creative Intelligence running the show that is far vaster than the limited human mind

• If life can manifest the DNA molecule on its own, not to mention create the human brain, how is it that we feel that we have to control everything on our own?
• If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to?

Surrender to life’s unfolding

• Life was asking me to get out of the way and let her do her thing.
• I was willing to roll the dice and let the flow of life be in charge.
• I was not in charge, yet life continued to unfold as if it knew just what it was doing.
• It seems as though life knew exactly what it was doing, and as usual, my mind knew nothing.
• What would happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my resistance and let the flow of life be in charge?
• My personal experience is that aligning one’s will with the natural forces unfolding around us leads to some surprisingly powerful results.
• I decided to stop listening to all the chatter about my personal preferences, and instead, start the willful practice of accepting what the flow of life was presenting me.

Quotes on Wisdom Trove