Nature Speaks

There is a quiet invitation in the work of Michael A. Singer.

In The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment, he reminds us that much of our suffering comes not from the world itself, but from the tightness of our grip on it. We try to hold, to fix, to arrange – yet life is more like a river than a stone wall. The river flows whether we resist it or not.

Singer’s suggestion is simple, though not easy: let go. Allow the current of life to carry you, even when you cannot see the bends ahead.

Out in the woods, this lesson comes alive. Watch a leaf fall into a stream in autumn. It spins, catches, stills against a rock, and then – at the smallest shift of water – is carried onward again. The leaf does not protest. It does not say: this is not the way I imagined it. It surrenders, and in doing so, remains part of the river’s story.

The poet Rilke once wrote: “Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” His words echo Singer’s: life is vast, and our task is not to control its tides but to be present within them.

There is an ancient wisdom in this posture of openness. Taoist writings speak of wu wei – effortless action, living in alignment with the flow of nature. Jung, too, spoke of allowing the unconscious to shape our path, trusting the psyche’s deeper currents. And contemporary voices like Pema Chödrön remind us that we can lean into uncertainty rather than shrinking from it.

When we walk through the fields or along the edge of a lake, we are surrounded by teachers of surrender. The swan that glides without effort. The hare that pauses, listening, then disappears into the hedgerow. The weather itself, forever changing yet never asking permission.

Singer tells us that the mind is like a restless roommate, always chattering, always judging. But if we step outside – into the quiet of dusk, into the breathing hush of trees – we can sense the wider silence that holds us. We begin to glimpse what he calls the seat of awareness – that steady place within us that watches life unfold without grasping at it.

The wild world is not separate from this teaching. It is its first scripture.

The woods whisper the same truth: let go, and you will be carried.

Perhaps, then, our lives can become less about defending our small islands of control, and more about opening to the larger sea. As Singer writes, “You’re not the voice in your head. You are the one who hears it.”

To live in this way is not withdrawal, but deep belonging. Like the leaf in the stream, like the migrating bird, we become participants in a mystery both ordinary and immense.

And so the invitation remains: when the mind tightens, when the world feels too heavy – step outside. Find a river, a tree, or simply the sky above you. Notice how it does not cling, does not resist. Notice how it continues. And let yourself be carried.