I recently read Michael Singer’s book The Surrender Experiment.  I admire his intense commitment to discover the nature of spiritual reality and not live within the dictates of his ego brain (chatter). His willingness to say “yes” to whatever appeared in his physical reality is astonishing.

If something showed up in his life, he trusted it was sent by “life” and therefore worthy of his “yes.”  If his ego chattered about it (or anything), he would ignore it.

While I do agree it is useful or even necessary to say “yes” to more in life, I do not agree that everything that shows up in life deserves a “yes.”   If someone just up and started living on my land – which happened to him – they would encounter the most decisive “no” you can imagine.  However, as artists (of all kinds) how do we use his technique of ignoring ego/brain chatter?

First, we must identify what this “voice” is.  This is your first task.  You do this by observing, by listening to what is going on in your head.  If it helps to take a few minutes (o.k., maybe one minute) to write down every thought in your mind, do that.

Also, sensations invariably accompany thoughts, so watch what feelings are coming up.  Once you get the hang of it, see if you can trace the feelings to the thoughts.  Thoughts are very (very) fast, so you might need to work on this a bit.

(More to come…..)