This is the lived story behind Michael Singer's teachings. In his twenties, Singer decided to stop letting his personal likes, dislikes, and fears run the show, and to surrender instead to whatever life brings. That experiment led him to solitary meditation in the woods, building a billion‑dollar medical software company, navigating love, unintentionally creating a spiritual community called The Temple of the Universe, facing federal charges (of which he was exonerated), and returning again and again to inner surrender in the midst of chaos.​ Singer writes as both practitioner and protagonist, in a tone that's both candid and humble, less “teacher on a pedestal” and more “fellow traveler” tracing how surrender reshaped his relationship with fear, success, and control.

What you can get from reading it

• A visceral, narrative sense of what surrender looks like in real time — saying yes to a job, a relationship, or a legal ordeal you never would’ve chosen, and growing through it.​
• Insight into how a dedicated inner practice can coexist with intense outer success, leadership, and conflict, without abandoning spirituality.​
• An embodied example of using discomfort, fear, and upheaval as cues to relax and trust life’s intelligence rather than clamp down in control.​
• Nuanced reflections on the difference between passivity and surrender: you still act, but from alignment with what’s unfolding rather than ego’s storyline.​
• Inspiration if you resonate more with stories than instruction — seeing the same core principles (witnessing, letting go, openness) play out over decades of one person’s life.​

About the author

Michael Singer is a spiritual teacher and entrepreneur who underwent a profound spiritual awakening in his twenties, leading him to a life of intense meditation and self‑inquiry in the woods of Florida. He later founded a billion-dollar medical software company and a spiritual community called The Temple of the Universe in Florida, teaching from the tension between deep inner practice and full engagement with worldly life.