It keeps surprising me how books seem to tell me what I need to hear at the moment I need it.
This morning on my bicycle I was listening to ‘the Surrender Project‘ again , a book by Michael A. Singer who also wrote the book I previously read called ‘Untethered Soul’. This book was suggested to me by Scribd after I finished the previous one. I had other books that I wanted to read , but I decided to start with this one instead.
This book is amazing , it is (among other things) about surrendering to life instead of one’s own preferences and aversions. This sounds simple but it is not. The book is biographical and at a certain point he realizes that life is offering opportunity all the time and if one follows these opportunities , great things can happen. At several times he is encountered with offers or situations that go strongly against his will but he accepts them. They turned out to be not what he expected but something that brings new exciting events in his life. He sees every event in life that is not according to personal preference as an opportunity to let go of a piece of the small self. He does this in two steps ;
1) let go of the feelings and thoughts associated with the aversion/preference.
2) once a degree of clarity has returned , decide what you would do when not influenced by preference.
There were some stories in the book this morning where life rewards him for choosing to go with the flow instead of preference that were so beautiful they brought tears to my eyes. I have been wondering for a while now what it means to be ‘in the flow’ of life , how does that work in practice? This book is showing me how that works and what needs to be overcome. It is very applicable for me now. The bigger the event that does not match your preference , the larger the chunk of personality you can let go of by surrendering to life.