When you conjure up thoughts of the Gator Nation and the beloved alumni of UF, glamorous images of Erin Andrews, Stephen Stills and Tim Tebow are bound to take center stage in your mind. (Okay, maybe the Stephen Stills thoughts aren’t so glamorous, but you get the point.)
The majority of our esteemed alumni left the swamp to pursue their dreams, and, aside from the occasional fan-induced Gator chomp on camera, they’ve never looked back.
There is one alumni, however, that never left.
You’ve probably never heard his name (though you may have, in connection with the beautiful Monet at the Harn Museum). But Michael A. Singer has remained quietly tucked away in the woods of Alachua for over 40 years.
In the ’70s, Michael, or “Mickey” for those who know him personally, traded the classroom walls of the University of Florida for a life of solitude in the peaceful wilderness outside of Gainesville.
From that wilderness, he would become the founding CEO of a billion-dollar public company, a #1 New York Times best-seller with his book “The Untethered Soul” and the unifying force behind a vibrant spiritual community called Temple of the Universe.
I’ve ventured to those quiet Alachua woods for the past two years to talk with Mickey about life, love, happiness, spirituality and everything in between.
His words changed my outlook on life and launched me on to a life-long journey of beautiful self-exploration. With his glowing blue eyes, wispy white ponytail and unmistakable laugh, I’ve always yearned to know the story of how this yogi came to be.
With the release of his new book, “The Surrender Experiment: My Journey into Life’s Perfection,” Mickey finally unearths his incredible life story.
The story centers on a 40-year experiment that asked the question: What would happen if I stopped trying to control my destiny and, instead, simply surrendered to the flow of life?
The results are truly awe-inspiring.
I had the pleasure of unearthing a little more with Mickey for our GainesvilleScene readers.
You talk about “the voice in your head” a lot throughout both “The Untethered Soul” and “The Surrender Experiment.” Can you explain what you mean by that?
Sure. If you stop for a moment and check out what is going on in your head, you will find that it is not exactly quiet in there. There is a voice constantly talking about what you’re afraid of, what you hope will happen, what you wished you had not just said, and so on. For example, it might be saying: “Oh my God, what’s going on? Is that Sally talking to Paul? I thought they didn’t get along. I hope they’re not talking about me!” That is the voice in your head, and if you watch what it says, instead of blindly getting lost in it, you will see that it is a serious problem. But that problem is solvable, and your life will be much happier if you learn to deal with that incessant chatter.
Every student at one point or another has dreamt of dropping out and ditching the rat race. Societal pressure and pressure from our parents to “become something” (and have that something make a lot of money) has become the guiding force. Did you feel those pressures when you were in graduate school? What advice do you have for dealing with those pressures?
I have great respect for the time we spend in college. Not only is it a tremendous educational experience, but for most of us it is the first time away from home on our own for a prolonged length of time. This means it is an opportunity to blossom personally, to grow-up. But no living organism can learn and grow properly under constant tension. Part of finding ourselves is learning to find a strong center within from which we can make good decisions and then apply ourselves outwardly. At some point in your life, these have to be your decisions and you have to be applying your will because you want to. Both your heart and mind have to be into what you are pursuing. It can’t be fear that is motivating you—in the end fear will destroy you. And it can’t really be desire that motivates you—desires keep changing, they are very fickle. You do not want to build your life based on fear or desire.
What’s left? Love, inspiration, and creativity are very healthy motivators, and if you learn to remain open and clear within yourself, they will never betray you. That is what happened to me. While I was in graduate school, I found my heart’s passion and fearlessly followed it. It has guided every moment of my life for over forty-five years. Our college years provide a very unique opportunity to truly find ourselves—it’s such a blessing, don’t waste it.
In college, it’s easy to let fear and uneasiness about the future run your life. How did you learn to let go of that fear and surrender?
I guess I’m kind of different. I realized at a young age that if I can’t be happy within myself, I’m going to be chasing happiness and well-being my entire life. So I defined the purpose of my life to have a great life, filled with joy, excitement, enthusiasm, and the love of life. That was my career choice. In the end, it is what everyone is looking for with every choice they make anyways, so why not just go for it directly.
My great realization was that it was actually me who was deciding whether events made me happy or not. If I wanted something to happen and it did, I was happy. If I didn’t want the exact same thing to happen, and it did, I was miserable. So it was really my preconceived attitude about the event that determined how the event affected me. If I studied as hard as I could for a test, and I got one question wrong, should I be upset because I didn’t get a perfect score, or should I be excited because I had an opportunity to learn something from the experience? In other words, by willfully working with my attitude, I could make life a much more exciting and enjoyable experience. I decided to make myself inwardly receptive to the experiences life was giving me. All of life became much more beautiful and exciting.
You were incredibly disciplined about your time spent alone in your younger years. Twenty-somethings today are immersed in a world of constant connection and distraction. We don’t have to focus on the discomfort of the voice in our heads if we can focus on four different social media accounts. How do you move past the initial weirdness of solitude?
First of all, each person has to find their own path to peace. Spending time alone may or may not be part of that path. What is true for everyone, however, is as follows: just as there are physiological habits that are clearly destructive to one’s goals and well-being, so there are psychological habits that may be even more destructive to a happy, healthy, fulfilling life.
If that voice in your head keeps pestering you about past minor mistakes, or even a past major mistake, then that can handicap you for the rest of your life. If we find ourselves hiding from ourselves through constant social interaction, there may come a time where we decide to just deal with our issues and put out the necessary effort to break our destructive psychological habits. I choose to call this “the time I put aside to work on myself”, rather than seeing it as time alone. An athlete training for the Olympics may spend lots of time running alone, but this is not a time of boring loneliness; it is a time of exciting challenge to improve oneself. I don’t want to have to hide from my past issues. I am willing to put the necessary time aside each day to mindfully let go of yesterday so that I can bring my best game into today.
College and post-grad life seem to be a never-ending game of defining yourself; by relationships, by affiliations with organizations, by academic major, by career, etc. In the beginning of the book, you discuss getting your heart broken and trying to fight the urge to rebuild a new self-concept. Why is this the default setting and what advice do you have about shedding those self-concepts?
The truth is that we live inside ourselves and look out into the world around us. Each of us is in here aware of our own thoughts and emotions while we are simultaneously receiving the world in through our senses. There is nobody else in here, just me. It’s a single occupancy situation. Even my girlfriend or boyfriend come in from the outside world and cause certain thoughts and emotions to be stimulated within me. That is simply the way it is: I am the center of conscious awareness who is experiencing all of this. Be that as it may, from a very young age, we are not comfortable in here, mostly because our thoughts and emotions are not such friendly companions. They often cause us a lot of trouble. So we try to be okay by defining how everything needs to be for us to feel safe and accepted. We develop a concept of ourselves in relation to the world outside of ourselves. We then have to take on the burden of trying to make everyone and everything around us match that concept. When everything lines up, we feel okay, but usually we are pretty overwhelmed trying to get it that way and keep it that way. Life becomes a struggle that creates tremendous anxiety and fear. This is not such a fun way to live.
In my twenties, I decided that I did not want the outside world determining the quality of my life. I wanted to be okay inside as a natural state, and then enjoy sharing that well-being with the life unfolding around me. To do that, I had to stop defining how things needed to be for me to be okay. I had to stop limiting life to my narrow self concept. My advice is to let go of these preconceived notions of how things need to be in order for you to be okay, and just practice being okay with what life brings you. Then use all that good energy to better the life unfolding around you by loving it and appreciating it as it passes before you. That is the highest and most fulfilling way to live life.
If you could go back and give any piece of advice to collegiate Mickey, what would it be?
Let go of all the negativity you have built up inside. Let the past be the past. Don’t store bad memories inside you or they will come back to haunt you for the rest of your life. You will never be able to bring your best into the current moment if you have all these psychological scars inside of you. If you don’t know how to let go of these past impressions, please take the time to learn. You are the highest species on the planet; you can learn anything. Learn how to be whole and complete within yourself so you have something beautiful to share with those around you. Life can be a very beautiful and exciting journey—wake up inside and learn to consciously create beauty within yourself on a moment-to-moment basis.
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In the hectic realm of classes, extracurriculars, volunteering and attempting to have a social life, it might not seem like there’s time to pick up a book, but “The Surrender Experiment” commands attention. It has the power to change the way you approach daily decisions and serious life plans.
It reveals a totally different side of the Gator Nation narrative.
Hop on over to Amazon or venture to Book Gallery West to grab your copy.
