Such a spiritual practice should occupy you, not the endless playing with life-problems and desires and hoping that eventually you will have visions that will relieve you of the obligation of real practice….you must understand and bring the body-mind into a state of equanimity wherein attention is free. That is really all you must do …and you should do it very directly and quickly so that you (do not) not spend the rest of your life in, exile, catering to Mother Nature.”
Seventh Stage Realization is Not ‘Old Dog’ Realization
Sila/Equanimity
A
Beezone Study
based on the teachings of Adi Da Samraj
What is Equanimity or Sila?
Equanimity is:
1. The release of attention from the self-bond.
2. The stable development of true psycho-physical equanimity.
3. Full responsibility for self-transcendence.
4. The magnification of free energy and attention.
“The Way of Life or Truth is a sober enterprise that is founded upon the mature equanimity of the body-mind. That Way is not itself characterized by mental knowledge, mystical states of the psyche, or physical and mental strategies for attainment. Those who take up that Way must have first matured to a sensitive state of psycho-physical equanimity, or freedom from reactive and self-possessed programs of thinking and bodily experiencing that cause one always to seek the Truth rather than presently surrender to the obvious Truth. Only when such maturity or equanimity has stabilized the body-mind can actual practice of the Way begin”.
Developed Third Stage of
Life
“The Gorilla conveys a sense of great strength and peacefulness. In this sense, it symbolizes the overall functional integration achieved in the third stage of life. Thus, the gorilla represents the force of the will in a state of equanimity. It is suggestive of peaceful, loving independence”.
Equanimity and Igorance
“”I” cannot inspect the existence of anything (or itself) from a position different from or outside existence itself.
“I” is not Transcendental but phenomenal.
“I” is the body-mind-self, and its right or native disposition is, therefore, not contraction, differentiation, and dissociation from the not-self (or the phenomenal world) but surrender to the degree of no-self, no-contraction, or self-transcending equanimity.
It is only in that disposition of psycho-physical equanimity (or free energy and attention) that the Transcendental Reality is obvious”.
“The self and the not-self are thus rightly perceived only in Ignorance (or the awareness corresponding to the view “I do not know what anything is”). Such is equanimity, freedom from self-contraction, or the state of free energy and attention. And such is the basic disposition that develops in the “yoga of consideration” that is the initial form of response to my Argument”.
“Simply practice this understanding and the basic beginner’s disciplines of expansion beyond self-contraction until there is a basic equanimity of the body-mind-self in Ignorance (or Divine Communion). In that equanimity (rather than in any form of belief or concentration of attention in experience or knowledge) there are free energy and attention. Therefore, when there is such basic equanimity, use the freely available energy and attention to inspect and re-cognize all the forms of self-contraction”.
“The Way of Life, which I have Realized, and which I propose, is founded upon equanimity, or prior transcendence of any and all conceptions of a dilemma or inherent problem of existence. Likewise, it is founded upon transcendence of the mood of recoil from bodily existence, or preference for confinement to the mental, psychic, or non-bodily illusion of self”.
“If “I” recoil from born experience and thus turn upon myself like Narcissus, the body-mind contracts. In that process, discomfort or dis-ease arises. The natural equanimity of the body-mind is lost in self-consciousness. A conception of dilemma arises, so that thereafter it is always as if I am motivated by some yet unspoken problem and toward some yet unrealized solution, happiness, or release”.
“This disease is apparently real. We do suffer. We do show signs of the absence of equanimity. We do exhibit the qualities of boredom, doubt, and discomfort, mental agitation, emotional distress, physical disease, and all the patterns of bondage in relationship. Wherever there is the self-contraction, there is bondage in relationship. Self-contraction is always associated with object-bondage or object-dependency”.
“Sila, or equanimity, is fundamental to truly human life. Even though many kinds of disciplines are associated with the Way of the Heart, one aspect is of continuous significance throughout the course of your practice. That is this process of releasing energy and attention from the self-bond and enjoying the state of equanimity, or natural control over the outgoing automaticities of energy and attention”.
“True sila is good discipline, if applied by one who would understand the conditional self. True sila is not the product of a problematic or negative summary view of conditional existence. True sila is a servant of consistent self observation and, ultimately, it is an expression of real and most fundamental self-understanding. Ultimately, true sila reflects real experience and true knowledge of the structural laws of the functional, practical, and relational processes of the body-mind. And such true sila expresses a reality-sense of the limits of conditional existence.
True sila is necessary and good for those who would realize god, but false sila is itself the avoidance of god.
The obvious limits of conditional existence provide all the reasons for either false sila or self-indulgence. In either case, the problem and the search become the logic of existence. And the problem with seeking is that it always serves and reinforces its own original principle, which is the self-contraction.
The god-realizing process is necessarily self-transcending. Therefore, it is not a process in which the guiding principle is either false sila or self-indulgence.
Ultimately, true sila is the discipline of love itself, or even happiness itself. The heart of true sila is true heart-fullness, or the spiritual heart-infusion of conditional existence through self transcending divine communion. Therefore, not false sila and not self-indulgence, but self-transcending love-communion with me under the circumstances of conditional existence, is the necessary ordeal”.
“…rather than reacting to events or conditions themselves. If this is done, then there is no Problem, no Question, and no seeking. And the apparent lifetime of the body-mind thus achieves equanimity, or freedom of participation, so that its destiny becomes natural, easeful, free of the strategies of ultimate fulfillment and release via knowledge and experience”.
“…stand prior to self contraction. When you stand in the position of the knot itself, the position of creating it, you can then feel beyond it and simply stand in the natural condition of relatedness. Thus, in any moment in which this simple feeling-realization is re-awakened whole-bodily, the knot of egoity is released, and you stand in the position of equanimity.
This realization, this original insight is twofold. First the knot of the self is released, and you are established in prior equanimity. When you stand prior to self-contraction, the disposition of merely being, feeling toward, feeling through, and feeling beyond, is awakened. The free, feeling disposition of free energy and attention, the natural state of equanimity, is realized. The second aspect of the same realization is that you are restored to relatedness. In the context of the first three stages of life, then, this self-understanding restores you to the variety of relations that pertain to the grosser dimension of the body mind. The process must proceed through the advancing stages of life, where this same self-observation, self-understanding, and self enquiry awaken in relation to the limitations that belong to the subtler dimensions of the self-experience.
Thus, the process that leads through the stages begins with listening and hearing. You practice in the sphere of relations and experiences, and you realize fundamental equanimity and relatedness. You progressively observe, understand, and feel beyond the limitations of the stages of life. This process culminates in the sixth stage process or in the transition to the seventh stage of life in the event of transcendence of the feeling of relatedness itself. In that event, the process is made single.
In the earlier stages the process is associated with the feeling of relatedness and therefore with a variety of objects, according to the stage of life. Thus, the agent of the process leading to the seventh stage of life is the feeling of relatedness, which is a natural realization developed on the basis of listening and hearing. In the equanimity prior to self contraction, the feeling of relatedness is wholly felt, wholly allowed, and in any moment in which the self-contraction intervenes, it is observed, understood, and felt beyond, or felt prior to. Instead of self-contraction generating your experience, the -feeling of relatedness, simple being, feeling toward, feeling through, and feeling beyond, is awakened in every moment of true self-enquiry or True Prayer”.
“The earliest stages of the practice of this Way in my Company, are associated with changes that serve.. purification of attenton…the establishment of psycho physical equanimity, and the freeing of energy and attention”.
“…higher levels of practice… cannot even begin until spiritual maturity, or until the body-mind is responsibly and naturally maintained in a conservative state of equanimity, and thus no longer obsesses or controls attention”.
“Psycho-physical equanimity, responsibility for energy and attention, will be the result of that. And on the basis of such equanimity, there will be free energy and attention, energy free of this ego-bond, energy free of the character of the false identication of the separate one. That free energy and attention is the ultimate arms or means at the level of the individual whereby Spiritual understanding can be fulfilled. Only when energy and attention are literally free from the ego illusion and bind at every level can this process of awakening can be fulfilled”.
“When the ego (or self-contraction) is understood and transcended, then Nature is seen from the point of view of Wisdom. Then the world is no longer conceived as a drama of warfare between Good and Evil. In place of this dilemma of opposites, a self-transcending and world-transcending equanimity appears. And in that equanimity there is an inherent Radiance that transcends the egoic dualities of Good and Evil. It is the Radiance of Love. And in that Free Radiance, energy and attention are inherently free from the ego-bond, self-contraction, or the “gravitational effect” of phenomenal self-awareness. Therefore, dynamic equanimity, or the free disposition of Love, is the “window” through which God may be “seen” – not in the conventional mode of Creator, Good, Other, or Heavenly Place, but as the Real, or the tacitly obvious Condition of all existence.
The ultimate moment in the play of Nature is not the moment of egoic success. The ultimate moment is beyond the contradictions of good and evil. It is the moment of equanimity, the still point or “eye” in the midst of the wheel of Nature’s motions and all the motivations of the born self. The Truth and Real Condition of self and Nature is Revealed only in that equanimity, beyond all stress and bondage of energy and attention.
This disposition of equanimity – free energy and attention – is basic to the conceptions of the sixth and seventh stages of life. In the sixth stage of life, it provides the functional base for the ultimate and final investigation of the ego and the dynamics of Nature. But in the seventh stage of life, fundamental equanimity is native and constant, expressing prior Transcendental Realization. It is in the seventh stage of life that God, Truth, or Reality is directly obvious, prior to every trace of egoity, dilemma, and seeking. Therefore, it is in the seventh stage …there is not anything that must be escaped or embraced for the Happiness of God-Realization to be actualized. It is inherently so”.
“It is Identification with Me beyond modifications, just As I Am, My Very State, My Very Person. That’s the “Perfect Practice”.
To do that, however, you must go through the tapas, the discipline of relinquishing all modifications until you come to that point of steadiness, fundamental purification, equanimity, one-pointedness”.
How is equanimity in the Way of the Heart different from traditional methods
Traditional method:
“In this greater power and illumination of mindfulness it becomes clear that the watcher and the watched are parts of the same process and that they arise and pass away according to certain laws, under certain conditions, You can see that a sound or a sight arises with a new moment of awareness, and that it then passes away. So there is a natural evolution in practice. When it is cultivated to a real depth and intensity, even the lower stages of your watching are eradicated; even the appearance of someone watching disappears.
Mindfulness has two separate functions. One is that it develops moment to moment concentration and -investigation. And the second factor is that it brings about balance. Out of this watching and out of this spontaneous development of balance and equanimity, one simply sees things from moment to moment, not condeming, not identifying, but simply seeing. When the mind comes to perfect balance, there is simply what is happening, nothing else. And this is the supermundane consciousness”.
Way of the Heart
“….even though initial adaptation to the practice of the Way develops many characteristics of interior attention, the primary and ultimate force and attitude of the practice is not based on a duplication of the exclusive and inverted pattern of death (or the abandonment of body and mind). The ultimate practice of the Way is Radiant, founded on Ecstasy, or priorly Enlightened Equanimity, which spontaneously and inherently Transfigures and Transforms the body-mind and the world of its relations with the Brightness of the Divine Life-Power”.
“Its only in your emptiness or dis-ease that you meditate on things, so to speak – desire them or not seek them and so forth, and become entangled in them. But if you can forget about them long enough to establish a new wholeness, a wholeness that doesn’t include those aberrating factors, then they’re truly obsolete, because you already have that fullness which you otherwise would look to achieve by those involvements. So you don’t need them. They’re not a need in you. They’re not about desiring.
That’s what happens when it gets fully that way, but even in the meantime there are degrees of purification and relaxation of the binding tendencies, and you enjoy more discrimination about them and discipline is effective more readily, simply. Eventually its not a struggle at all. But when there is this true, fully established equanimity, there’s also great concentration, freedom of energy and attention, and the previous adaptations that were binding have been made obsolete by non-use, through discipline, through Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga, all of it. So you are full, whole, not seeking, the body-mind in a state of equanimity. You see how you’ve become disentangled. So that’s what the original period of the process is about. And as it moves into the Spiritual dimension of the exercise, it Realizes Spiritual equanimity, a fullness unagitated.
And that fullness, of course, is especially magnified in the profoundest exercise, in meditation and so on. But when you’ve entered into that sphere of equanimity – no longer agitated such that your practice is undermined – its then that you are presenting yourself, or established in equanimity and in Communion with Me, such that energy and attention can become directly focused in the right side of the heart. Attention not agitated, attention can be transcended directly.
If attention is simply moving about, you’re always noticing its objects. But if that fitfulness relaxes, you can be sensitive to attention itself, because it’s steady and doesn’t just jump to objects. It has a certain kind of equanimity itself, such that attention can be comprehended. And it’s the last thing in the space – everything is epitomized as attention. When it is found in the Self-Condition, in Consciousness Itself, its something like the hearing matter. You’re in the position of that first contraction. In fact it is the hearing matter, but exercised at this later stage. Its like the original hearing understanding, because you suddenly grasp it – the self-contraction and the ability to feel beyond it.
So in this noticing and equanimity, this noticing of attention is the first stroke, really. It is the feeling of relatedness, the feeling of separateness. It is the root-disturbance, but you’re feeling beyond it. But yet you notice this is a sensation in the midst of Consciousness Itself, an apparition there. Suddenly you become aware of the Self-Field in Which that primary thought or gesture is arising. So this shift, in other words, is from being identified with attention, by focusing on it, to being identified with the Consciousness in Which its appearing.
So that is the basic event in which there is a transition to the Witness-Position”.