Session 1: Who Am I?

This is an eight part course by Michael Singer called Living From a Place of Surrender. I will be giving my summary on each session in individual blog posts, highlighting the information I found to be most beneficial. This is a course in deep spirituality that focuses on Surrender & Presence. I is not affiliated with any particular religion, rather is based on Michael's life experiences and spiritual practices over several decades. This course has been extremely influential for me and I hope that you find its content equally life-changing. If you enjoy the teachings of Eckhart Tolle (one of my favorite teachers), this is right up your alley! Enjoy.

Intro

The purpose of this course is learning to surrender, to let go of the present moment. Surrender releases us from unhealthy desire, which is the cause of most stress in our lives. Once we no longer need things to be a certain way to feel good, we are free. Surrender produces freedom and is the highest path in spirituality. In this course, we will learn about the elements that are controlling us that we are mostly unaware of. Then, we will learn how to break away from their control by adopting a few simple tools into our daily lives. This process of surrender moves us beyond the Lower Self to the Higher Self. The Lower Self is unconsciously controlled by the elements of this world, but the Higher Self is free and is fully present. This process is easy to understand, but it takes dedication to experience its results.

Who Am I?

Who are you at the deepest level? A helpful starting point is to ponder the question: “Hi, are you in there?” Yes, of course you are in there. You are the one who is in there looking out at the world, having a wide variety of experiences. You are aware that you are aware. Are you more than your physical body? Yes, because you could become a paraplegic and still feel like yourself, which is the one who is conscious. Who hears when you hear? Who feels when you feel? Who sees when you see? You are the one who notices that someone is in there hearing and feeling and seeing. You are able to move beyond these sense experiences and be the outside looker, noticing that you are having experiences. Thus, we are more than mere instinctual creatures and can contemplate the complexity of our instincts...good or bad, helpful or unhelpful.

It is not that we have a soul, we ARE a soul, or spirit. The label you give IT does not matter. The soul is the deepest part of who we are, way beyond our physical bodies. It is eternal. We are also not a gender at the deepest level, rather we are looking at out the body that we are living in. People have a fear of death because they primarily associate their consciousness with their physical bodies. They fear that the destruction of their body will be the end of their consciousness. Either this will come true and then we won't know it anyway, or our consciousness will move on to another realm and, we will have another experience that is either similar or dissimilar to this one.

After recognizing that we are in our bodies looking out at the world, the next helpful question for self-reflection is: “What it is like in there?” Sometimes it is good, and sometimes not so good. The key is NOT to find out what makes it good in there, rather to find out WHY it is not good in there. To find our answer, we need to know about the following three elements that determine our state:

1. The Outside World: experienced through your senses
2. Thoughts: experienced through your mind
3. Feelings: experienced through your heart

This is a chronological sequence that determines our state of being. First, we experience the outside world through our five senses. Next, our mind produces thoughts about these sense experiences and saves the information. Third, our heart emotes feelings based on the way our mind thinks about these experiences. This sequence is unconsciously occurring all the time and is what generates a positive or negative state. Therefore, life mostly consists of us all running around the planet trying to manufacture a positive state by controlling our circumstances, thoughts, and feelings. When we aren’t enjoying our state, we take certain actions to try and make it better. And when are enjoying our experience, we cling to it hoping it will last and then attempt to relive it once the high wears off. This is the reason for vacations, affairs, drugs, alcohol, thrill-seeking, buying a new car, going shopping, having sex, etc.

This is a spiritual course and will be teaching us how to go beyond these three elements (outside world, thoughts, emotions), so that our state is not directly attached to them. First, we will take a closer look at these three elements, so we can gain a better understanding of why they control us and how we can be free from that control. Then, we will learn how to apply this knowledge to our everyday lives, so that we can develop tools and habits. Instead of doing what most people do in the world, which is trying to control circumstances to feel okay, we will focus our attention on the awareness of our consciousness.

   

A very mysterious aspect of our existence is the voice inside our head that never shuts up. It is usually blabbering about things that are negative or worrisome. The voice is rarely helpful. The good news is: WE ARE NOT OUR VOICE. We are the one who is aware of the voice. When you have the epiphany of noticing the voice in your head, your life will change. Meditation is a key practice to learn how to pay attention to the voice and quiet it by learning to focus on breath or something else. Meditation teaches us to be constantly aware of the chattering voice and unimportant stuff that is grabbing our attention in our everyday lives, so that we are able to surrender and become free from its control over us.