Aletheon
“Nobody is taking you home“
Beezone
“The Inherent Purpose Of Spiritual Practice Of The Only By-Me Revealed and Given Way Of The Heart Is To Inherently Transcend the point of view that is the physical body, and To Inherently Transcend the point of view that is the mind, and To Inherently Transcend Identification With Even every kind of psycho-physical, or conditional, or Otherwise Dependently arising point of view”.
Sutra 48 – The Dawn Horse Testament
What is ‘Practice’?
Key Terms
What is Meant by ‘Practice’?
Beezone enquiry into the nature of ‘Spiritual Practice’
in the literature of Adi Da Samraj
and
How can you tell if a devotee is MATURE?
Adi Da Samraj, 1985
***
DEVOTEE: Do you become responsible for the self-contraction at every level of your being?
AVATARA ADI DA: To be responsible with it at every level of your being is a different kind of a question. In other words it refers to the extensions of the self-contraction in all aspects of your life and experience, whatever it may amount to. Of course you have to do the sadhana in the context of all of those arisings. Hearing is the means to do so, hearing and all the other aspects of practice associated with it, and seeing. But you have to bring those arms to it to see them themselves be transformed. But in hearing itself and seeing itself, you’re already free of the bondage in some fundamental essential sense, so that your combination with it becomes intelligent and profoundly effective.
So, relative to the expectation of outer changes, you have to do the sadhana in those circumstances or those contexts and have them be transformed. And that is certainly a part of everyones practice, then, even from the beginning.
But, its not that the purpose of the practice is to transform and perfect all aspects of your apparent personality. No, its rooted in egoity, infiltrated by it, is the ego. So, its not there to be perfected. You simply conform it to your purpose of Realization. But it is transformed in various ways in the process. You have to deal with these arisings responsibly and feel beyond them. Of course, I should also say that sometimes many such changes can occur very spontaneously and very suddenly, and some powerful transition in practice can be the basis for that or arise coincidently with it.
So the body-mind must be purified sufficiently to release energy and attention for “Perfect Practice”, but the body-mind itself does not have to become perfect as a prerequisite for the “Perfect Practice”, and cannot itself become perfect anyway. It is Perfect only in its Inherence in the Divine Condition. But its not in itself perfectible. Its true, as considered in the Buddhist tradition: Everything that arises is unsatisfactory and changing. You cannot be satisfied with any conditional state or event or conjunction, because it will inevitably pass. It will go through changes. Your clinging to it, your search for it, is disturbance.
And then an additional insight is that, in any case, this self that is clinging to what is even changing and unsatisfactory has no substantial separate existence as a being. There is no such existing being as the separate one. Rather, what you notice as yourself – as the basis for your presumption of a separate, being a separate person – is a conglomeration of arisings that are constantly changing and do not amount to a permanent self. In other words, what is conditional is conditional. But you are presuming a permanent self somehow.
Adi Da Samraj, 1996
Introduction
Beezone’s definition of ‘Practice’ is the ability to embrace life adapting devotional discipline and purification enabling a practitioner to go beyond the activity and pattern of ego.
The Practice Of The …Way Of The Heart Is Characterized By A Gradual Progression Of Awareness Of Me*, and By Progressive Devotional Heart-Communion With Me – Progressively Revealed and Progressively Realized By My Four…Forms. – Sutra 14 – The Dawn Horse Testament
‘Practice’ is always revealed in stages of what there was in the beginning, devotional recognition and response to Reality, Me*.
Though this discipline in the Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam is based on ‘no search’ and ‘no seeking’ and ‘no ego-effort’ there IS a ‘practice’ and a ‘method’ associated with it. It is a paradox and the conundrum of ego. That paradox and conundrum is in association with a Blessing Power and a Recognition-Response to What Is; The Divine Samadhi of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, the Form of God, Truth and Reality, The “Bright“.
“The various practices are themselves simply ways of responsibly adapting to higher aspects of psycho-physical existence in the Play of Life but the essentially spiritual responsibility in the Reality-Way of Adidam is the one of transcendence of experience, or the limiting conditions of the soul.” (Enightenment of the Whole Body)
“The question you must answer from the very beginning is, “Will you grasp this principle and become a practitioner?” Not will you merely practice the outer features of the discipline and habits associated with our unique culture, but will you practice as someone who has truly “heard” and “seen,” who has been converted from the problem, converted from always trying to solve some problem, overcome some dilemma, or achieve some release.” (Dreaded Gom Boo)
*For clarification of Adi Da’s meaning of ‘Me’ see: Beezone Study on ‘Don’t Misunderstand Me’.
Spiritual life – Spiritual Practice – Is not a cure.
There is no remedy.
There is no achievement there is only conformity to Reality, Me.
Conformity requires Right Effort.
No practice realizes Truth, that is the search.
Truth is the context of practice.
Spiritual life Is the life of Truth.
It is the practice of life In a world where the Living Heart, Not your dilemma and search, Is the condition.
All experience binds unless there is ego transcending practice.
As long as … “experience” persist, there must be the Practice AND The Realization—both.
The Heart is the practice regardless of what arises, regardless of your circumstance, regardless of conditions. This does not mean that you deliberately ignore conditions. It means that you turn the faculties to the Heart instead of wandering in conditions…When you are turned to the Heart, the contents of “experience” do not bind you.
Turning to the Heart does not make you dysfunctional.
Truth is realized through the inspection of experience to the point of realizing that experience has no obligatory force and that none of it is the point of spiritual life.
The point is this single responsibility, this single principle, this single inspection of your state in this moment, of your Narcissistic self-concern, of the contraction toward fear.
Be responsible for that contraction so that you exist instead as Love, or God-Communion.
That is everything.
That is the whole Teaching.
There is nothing to be attained.
There is a single principle for which we must be responsible, and that is God-Realization.
It is not the way to God-Realization.
It is God-Realization itself.
It is the disposition in Truth.
It is the Way of life.
Spiritual life Is a demand, Not a form of therapy.
The Rationale of Practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance
Adi Da Samraj, 1978
The subjective, astral, mental, or psychic dimension of the psycho-physical being is the medium between the soul and the body, or the field of concrete relations. Therefore, the mind is the repository of tendencies, urges, or desires, which produce bodily action. In this sense, the subjective aspect of the bodily being is senior to the objective or bodily aspect. However, the mind, in itself, is nothing more than attention. It becomes tendencies of attention through association, contact, repetition, and reaction in relation to experiential phenomena. Thus, the body, in its various objective relations, is senior to the mind, or the interior, subjective personality, as a source of tendencies.
The body-mind, therefore, is not simply controlled by the mind. The body-mind is a dynamic or two-sided mechanism, in which both aspects cycle through phases of dependence and dominance in relation to one another. This scheme requires a unique form of intelligence or wisdom to appear, or else there is no self-mastery.
The Practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance accounts for the dual or dynamic nature of the body-mind, while it is also founded in the radical point of view of the Free soul. At every stage of the Way, right functional or whole bodily activity is the chosen principle, rather than any or all forms of exclusively subjective or internal and mental self-manipulation. The individual must change his action first, or else the contents of the mind, which are only a reflection of past actions, will not change. At every stage of the Way, the devotee is obliged to accept responsibility for a more and more total functional spectrum of action.
Coincident with responsibility for the whole body, or action (which naturally includes right and responsible exercise of the various mental and psychic faculties), the devotee is also constantly obliged to bypass all casual indulgence of the mind – as random internal urges, desires, thoughts, subtle experiences, and so forth. The random content of the mind is not manipulated or suppressed. Rather, the random content of the mind is simply not indulged. Instead, the root of all mental content, which is simple attention, is constantly entered into the Disposition of Love Communion with the Living God.
As a result of the two principal aspects of Practice – appropriate or responsible whole bodily action and surrender of attention into Divine Communion – the motivating content of the subjective or internal personality is undermined, and it ultimately becomes obsolete. In this manner, the mind, or the subjective being, which migrates and causes the soul to experience birth in the Realm of Change and Death, is Dissolved in the Living God. Therefore, at last, the soul Abides in God, and the body, or the formal association with experience, falls away – since the mind is no longer there to demand experience.
Practice in every stage of the Way of Divine Ignorance is guided by this understanding. The Essential Principle is Awakened through “hearing” and “seeing” the Spiritual Master in Truth. That Principle is the Disposition of the Free soul, or continuous Love-Communion with the All-Pervading Radiant and Transcendental Consciousness that is the God and Self of all. In this Disposition, the mind, or the self-possessed gesture of differentiated attention, is constantly bypassed, undermined, and made obsolete by non-use.
Likewise, every moment of Divine Love-Communion is enacted whole bodily. That is, it is not merely an internal, subjective, or mental-psychic gesture. Rather, it is a matter of responsible, whole bodily or psycho-physical activity. Therefore, in every moment, whatever action or functional condition is natural and appropriate is openly and freely engaged, and it is engaged as a form of conscious Love-Communion with the Living God, the Condition of all conditions.
This is the Ultimate Principle or Logic of Spiritual Practice in the Way of Divine Ignorance.
Listen to Adi Da talk on discipline (07:47)
Controntation – Discipline and Service
As the practice progresses the same in-depth study of all these matters continues. The individual is now addressed by the Teaching personally and is called to confront himself or herself for the sake of self-observation and self understanding. At this stage, therefore, the functional disciplines are added to the student’s participation in order to serve this process. Also, service disciplines are engaged.
This notion that Spiritual live is just something to get enthusiastic about, and you start it as soon as you get your first lecture, is just part of the absurd consumer culture in the world, and that this not how it works. People do not think they have to deal with anything in themseles and transform their behavior, and be purified of all kinds of habits, habits of mind as well as of body, as a basis for spiritual life. They think Spiritual life is just something you take up based ona philosophical intention, and it is not so… Adi Da 2004
A limited degree in sacramental occasions, such as educational gatherings for chanting and meeting with other practitioners. A level of sacred activity exists for everyone. One’s participation increases over time.
Then what follows, already a subject of consideration, including the Teaching as it relates to the practitioner’s life, continues to be considered.
Spiritual Practice a Paradox
Great Principle of Spiritual practice is Satsang.
The Guru-Function is associated with the Great Principle of Satsang.
The Essence of the practice of Satsang is to focus attention on the Realized Condition of a true Adept.
And for that Realized Condition to:
The function of the Guru is first of all to make the student a devotee through the process of understanding, until he comes to the point of surrender. Then the Guru enters where he surrenders, and that one becomes a devotee. That is the entire yoga of this Way.
Exactly how this mechanism of Satsang works is not clear at the outset.
Prior to its perfect realization, it cannot be grasped (with the mind).
It is elusive.
The Practice is Founded in Paradox.
“….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 …inverted pattern
There is no direct method for removing either behavioral tendencies or the obsessive stream of thinking. Nonetheless, these patterns must be mastered and undone, since they are the essential content of the motivated, compulsive, and illusory display of egoic suffering, or subjective differentiation.
The heart-region of the egoic individual functions as the primary seat of functional emotion and of my Avatarically self-transmitted divine spirit-energy. And the heart-expression is retarded by the self-contraction, such that it becomes characterized by a range of non-spiritual and diminished spiritual signs – from the absence of spiritual awareness to the spiritual “disease” of diminished spiritual delight. And the self-contracted heart is also characterized by a range of emotions associated with un-love, or non-love, or ego-based and superficial pseudo-love, or diminished love.
The core of the being is the heart, not the head or the navel, but the heart, the function of feeling-attention, the unobstructed emotional connection, or communion with everything through feeling.
That function is the principal one, and the realization of spiritual life depends on that function, on its becoming active.
Spiritual practice is about the re-adapt to this feeling function of the heart.
The problems we have in functioning from day to day and our failure to realize God, or Truth, are both the consequences of the contraction of the heart, or the feeling being.
The Reality-Condition could be Realized simply by Sighting Me here…but the ‘reason’ it’s not is because of the self-contraction.
The reason that My “Bright” Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State is not Obvious to you is that you are bound up in your own errors, your own habits, your own “self’-reflection, your own egoic “self’-identification with the body-mind-complex.
If the heart is obstructed, we become obsessively physical, emotional, or mental in our play of life.
Likewise if the heart, or the feeling dimension, is obstructed, we cannot realize God, or Truth, or the Real Condition.
The practice of real, or spiritual, life is to exercise the feeling devotion of the being, to come alive at the heart, and therefore to inform with unobstructed feeling the mental and the physical functions that surround the feeling nature.
If the heart is awakened, we ultimately will realize the true Condition of our manifestation, which is not independent consciousness at all.
For a full inquiry of ‘self-contraction’ see Beezone Study on ‘The Knot of self-Contraction’.
For a full inquiry of ‘THE HEART’ see Beezone Study on ‘Three Hearts’
In the beginning the stages of recognition of the Spiritual Master should also be considered, as well as the student’s special involvement with or recognition of the Master as Teacher at this stage. He or she may acknowledge Me as more than Teacher, but the practice is to approach Me as Teacher, to receive the Teaching and instruction, and to prepare for advanced practice based on a more profound recognition of Me as time goes on.
DEVOTEE: Master, that essay you gave us on recognition of the Spiritual Master … you described four forms of recognition of the Spiritual Master. As you were speaking … began to speak about the human level and such as teacher, the development into Spiritual Master as spiritual presence, and how that animates itself through the whole life of practice, and what that reflects as a total disposition of practice, and as the source of it as full identification with that, which is your Condition.
MASTER: So a fundamental aspect of the Way is the progressive recognition of the Spiritual Master. In other words entering into that Company, the sphere of the Spiritual Master’s Influence more and more profoundly. By entering into more and more levels of recognition of the Spiritual Master.
more >>>
In the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Transcendental Spiritual Process, the feeling heart awakens.
The Spirit-Presence is Found by Grace. The Company, the Argument, and the Teaching Work of the Spiritual Master are the principal Agents of Transmission or Grace.
Practice of the Way is made possible through the Grace that Radiates via these human Agencies of the Divine. Therefore, practice of the Way should be engaged within the culture of these Agents of Grace.
Initially the left side of the heart is awakened through feeling (the waking, frontal, gross dimension of conditionally manifest existence).
As the practice develops the middle heart (or the subtle and higher psychic region), such that the fully Transcendentally Spiritualizing Process occurs in the domain of the frontal personality.
Satsang with Me begins as an essentially homely affair, in which, having already heart-recognized Me, you begin to respond to Me by heart-responding to My Avataric Divine Wisdom-Instruction. You begin to deal with your life in the practical ways I require, until you can truly turn to Me.”
Satsang with Me is not simply a common relationship between a Teacher and a disciple.
Satsang with Me includes all of the practicalities and ordinariness and homeliness of a human relationship and a Teaching relationship – but, fundamentally, even from the beginning, Satsang with Me is the Enjoyment of My Bright Divine Spiritual Body
When that begins, then all of the transforming events follow. But Satsang is always the context for the process of self-observation, insight, and enquiry.
There may also arise the secondary process of the movement of the life-force, and your consequent participation in it in the form of conscious conductivity.
In order for that to be true sadhana and not an organ of the search, you must continually return to the fundamental, which is Satsang itself.
It is to that fundamental and prior Condition, Satsang, that you are continually returning, even in the midst of these transforming events. Otherwise, they become your concerns. They become distractions, fascinations, images in the pond, ritual instruments, liturgical instruments for the priesthood of Narcissus. So I am continually reminding you of this fundamental Condition.
“Great Principle of Spiritual practice is Satsang and Guru-Function is associated with the Great Principle of Satsang. The Essence of the practice of Satsang is to focus attention on the Realized Condition of a true Adept.
Exactly how this mechanism of Satsang works is not clear at the outset. Prior to its perfect realization, it cannot be grasped. It is elusive. So, as you say, you are trying to get down to it. But if you try to discover or perform it yourself, your blood vessels will burst. It won’t happen. If you don’t already live the point of view of the heart, vital, subtle or causal, how are you going to move into it? Your point of view is in your head, or your legs, wherever. Satsang, the company and condition of Truth, is your true resort, and in Satsang you will find yourself falling spontaneously into the “Heart,” the Heart of Truth, which transcends the manifest realizations.”
For a full inquiry in ‘SATSANG’ see Beezone Study on ‘The Nature of Satsang’.
The Way of Adidam, even from the beginning, I Am the Principle of your practice. Therefore, every aspect of the practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Way of Adidam is Informed by Me, and Informed by your heart-Communion with Me, and Informed by the only-by-Me Revealed and Given seventh stage Realization.
For more on ‘THE GURU FUNCTION’ see 1973 talk ‘Guru as Prophet’.
“In the Way of the Heart, all practices in the context of any or all of the first four stages (The Descending or Frontal Line Of the body-mind) of life are to be understood to be only preliminary practices. Therefore, all such practices simply serve to purify, re-balance, and to spiritually regenerate the body-mind, as preparation for clear and stable awakening to the witness-position of Consciousness Itself”.
Sutra 25 – The Dawn Horse Testament
“The transition to the Witness and the “Perfect Practice”‘…is a heart exercise – in a fundamental sense quite different from the heart exercise in the context of the earlier stages, which, as I’ve described to you, is a self-surrrndering, self-forgetting motion toward Me that becomes forms of absorptive Contemplation of Me in relationship to you. The “Perfect Practice”, like I described it to you last night, in the Prior Position, there it is surrendered to Me in the Plane of No-Difference, prior to attention, prior to differences, prior to objects, prior to the body-mind references and so on.”
Adi Da Samraj, 2004
Perfect Practice – All Pranas Are Tuned to the Heart – Adi Da Samraj, 2004.
“Even Though My Arguments Relative To The Witness-Consciousness Are An Essential Guide To Right Understanding Of The “Perfect Practice”, … The “Consideration” Of Those Arguments Is Not Itself The Direct and Finally Effective Means Whereby The “Perfect Practice” Is Initiated and Really Practiced.
The Transition To The “Perfect Practice” Of The Way Of The Heart Is Necessarily A By-Me-Given Yogic and Spiritual Process, and The Samadhi Of The “Thumbs” Is The Necessary Basis Of That Transition’.
The Dawn Horse Testament – Sutra 45, 2004
Also see: The Torque of Attention – A Beezone Study
The Practice of Satsang is NOT a technique.
True spirituality is a moral and spiritual transformation.
There are Stages of Practice….there is a process called Practice and it requires action.
“You conceive of the practice as a process that begins by listening and hearing, and receiving the Blessing of the Spirit Presence, then submitting to that Presence bodily, letting the Current be felt moving through the frontal line and then up the spinal line and so on. The progression of the stages seems natural to you, but by conceiving of it in those terms, you are like a person in a dream trying to run in sand while being chased by a monster. You think that you are going to accomplish all of those stages by persisting in the view you are presently holding on to, but in fact you do not accomplish the stages. You do not move at all! You do not progress through the stages. There is no effort that accomplishes the stages”.
This early stage of practice is oriented to opening the frontal line to the descending current. The practice is to overcome frontal neurotic blocks or reactivity that tends to reverse the frontal line. In other words, through Submission to the Living Spiritual Presence, practitioners normalize, balance, and economize their life-practice.
This stage does not involve the specific orientation to ascent, although the occurrence of ascending phenomena is possible because the basic practice of conductivity is established.
“We are not specifically looking for signs that belong to the later stages of life. We are looking for freedom from human neurosis. We are looking for balance in the first three stages of life, and for the emotional, devotional, and spiritual signs of the fourth stage of life-altogether the signs of equanimity in daily life, sexual equanimity in terms of true human relatedness and intimacy, physical health, and the ability to serve as a balanced and sane participant in the institutional and community life. Whatever other signs may exist, these are the truly human signs that must be shown”.
Adi Da Samraj – 1987
Levels of Practice and Stage of Life
“Only those who have accepted the discipline of religious or spiritual renunciation sufficiently to release attention from the bond of the mechanics of ego or body-mind can practice the conscious process in its radical form. The radical process of spiritual practice can be described to people, and I have written a great deal about the radical form of the conscious process. It need not be kept secret particularly, but it cannot be practiced fruitfully by an individual in whom attention is not fundamentally free. One cannot simply communicate to people in general a sixth stage teaching, for instance, such as the teaching of Advaita Vedanta or the mindfulness discipline of original Buddhism, and expect that everybody will therefore be able to practice it. Most people must engage preliminary or supportive practices. Most people should approach the radical Way through the lesser stages of life, because one cannot practice the advanced levels without an increase of available energy and attention.
Thus, this radical practice that I communicate based on the seventh stage disposition is not something that people can rightly, truly, fully, and fruitfully practice without preparation, without available energy and attention.”
“I take all of your impediments, tendencies, and demand for more time into account. Therefore, the Way accounts for all of the possibilities that human beings may introduce into this process. The Dawn Horse Testament is the summary of all that”.
“I have also communicated the forms of spiritual practice that basically represent the preparation for the most radical practice, preparation that releases energy and attention for the conscious process, which is the fundamental process I consider. That process in consciousness cannot really be engaged until there is free attention, because in that process attention itself is encountered and transcended. If you cannot enter into the consideration of naked attention itself, the fundamental mechanics of the being, then you cannot practice in the fadical sense. Most people cannot. The attention of most people is wandering in the conditions of the body-mind and is not free to inspect and transcend itself”.
Realization
Right Life requires Right devotion and Right Recognition
To Realize the Supreme State of the Eternal Divine Person, Adi Da Samraj, requires absolute devotional subordination of separate “self” to Him and relinquishment of the ego-bound search. This “radical” devotion is the first aspect of the Reality Way of Adidam.
or said another way…
To Realize Divine Enlightenment the separate “self” and its search must be relinquished to the One Eternal Divine Reality That Is Always Already Prior to self, other and world.
The second aspect is renunciation, enacted as all the forms of “self” discipline, or right life.
The third aspect is “perfect knowledge” of the Eternal Divine One, which is “perfect knowledge” of Reality Itself.
Surrender requires profound discrimination and obedience.
I do not propose a Way of practice that is based on belief in the Transcendental Reality.
The fundamental Argument of the radical Way of the Heart is not a description of the Divine or Transcendental Reality, nor a prescription for practice based on the affirmation of belief in that described Reality.
My fundamental Argument is simply a criticism of the self-contraction in all its forms.
I call for the practice of self-observation and insight into the self-contraction, until “Whatever” or “Whoever” or “Itever” It is that transcends it stands out as the Obvious.
When my Argument has been thoroughly considered, when the self is discovered to be Narcissus or the activity of self-contraction, and when all the forms of self-contraction, appearing as self and not-self, have been re-cognized and transcended, then the Transcendental Reality is Realized as the Obvious. But only then.
For a full inquiry of ‘self-contraction’ see Beezone Study on ‘The Knot of self-Contraction’.
For a full inquiry of ‘self-observation see Beezone Study on ‘self-observation’.
“The first step, then, is simply to study this consideration. Consider the teaching argument, do what you will in your personal life, assume responsibility to study. Study, ponder, observe yourself, observe your life. When it becomes your own, then you can begin to add to the discipline” – Adi Da – 1987
My Avatarically Self-Revealed Divine Word Of Heart-Instruction Is Founded On Two Basic (and Complementary) Teaching-Arguments. The First Is My Teaching-Argument Relative To “Radical” Understanding (or Most Direct – and, Most Ultimately, Inherent, and Inherently Most Perfect-Transcending Of the self-Contraction).
The Second Is My Teaching-Argument Relative To Divine ignorance (or Inherent, and Inherently Most Perfect, Divine Self-Realization).
The Dawn Horse Testament – 2004
Narcissus, Ignorance, and Happiness are the three principal Subjects of the Argument that must be heard (or understood).
Only when the Argument is heard can seeing, conversion, or the moment to moment location of prior Happiness begin.
Crisis – No one begins to live Spiritual life Until he or she has suffered.
The first great crisis of life occurs in all of us. But most of us simply go on from there to seek Happiness, or even to despair of It.
The second great crisis of life occurs only in the case of those who can seriously accept and understand the Lesson of the first great crisis of life.
Therefore, I Argue that Lesson, so that you may become serious, understand your unhappiness, and begin the Way of Happiness Itself.
The second great crisis of life is this process of serious understanding of unhappiness and conversion to the Way of Happiness (rather than the futile search for Happiness).
The practice of real or spiritual life begins to make a difference when people who are living conventional lives are no longer addicted to the worldly game. Not that they become otherworldly and separate from the world entirely, but they no longer live as a manifestation of conventional consciousness and interests.”
Serious people are not committed to superficiality. If you are My devotee, you must become serious-and become moved to seriousness. The practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given “Radical” Reality-Way of Adidam – beginning with the foundationary practice of Sighting Me and Listening to Me – is entirely about such seriousness. My devotee must embrace the in-depth process that rightly and thoroughly deals with the issues of existence.
For a full inquiry of ‘NARCISSUS’ go to Beezone Study of ‘Narcissus’
For a full inquiry of ‘CRISIS’ go to Beezone Study of ‘Truth, Romance and Illusion’
For a full inquiry of ‘THE ARGUMENT’ go to Beezone Study on ‘Adi Da 101’
ADI DA SAMRAJ: But I have been making that clear for quite a long time. One would expect that if you were as serious as you just said you are, that you would have gotten your act together by now and not just be coming to Me twenty-one years later or whatever and just starting to feel a little serious or getting a little bored with your act, that kind of thing. That’s not hearing. That’s not renunciation, that’s not great devotion, that’s not maturity, that’s not Samadhi.
You, personally, want to avoid dissatisfaction. You want to be basically pleased and do not want to have difficulty. Perhaps one of the greatest characteristics of a most serious devotee, is the characteristic of dissatisfaction, the awareness that you are not, and will not be, satisfied by anything, by anyone, by any arrangement, any experience. The closer you are to, having dissatisfaction be profoundly true of you, the closer you are to being a most serious devotee of Mine.
Profound Consideration = One Pointed
“Listening” is Avatar Adi Da’s technical term for the orientation, disposition, and beginning practice of the Way of Adidam. A listening devotee “listens” to Avatar Adi Da Samraj by “considering” His Teaching-Argument and His Leelas, and by practicing feeling-Contemplation of Him (primarily of His bodily human Divine Form). In the total (or full and complete) practice of the Way of Adidam effective listening is the necessary prerequisite for true hearing and true seeing.
For those who would thus adapt themselves at least with a little of their lives, I recommend a way that is easy to conceive and fulfill. Simply turn to God through me. Submit, surrender yourself to God through me. Love and receive God through me.
“Those who are simply listening to the Teaching, who have not entered into this conversion in the Company of the Spiritual Master, may as part of the natural discipline of listening assume the various practical conditions associated with the practice of this Way, but even so they are not yet practicing the Way. They are listening or giving their attention to the possibility of practice. When there is full conversion, or “hearing” and “seeing” to the point of real practice, then real preparation for the ultimate form of the Way begins—and not until then.”
The fundamental right and true practice of Listening to Me is engaged as a tacitly heart-intelligent whole bodily devotional receptivity-practice, wherein My Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealing Leelas and My Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealed Word are neither addressed to nor received by nor mediated by the mind…but are, rather, tacitly received At, and In, and By the “Root”-and-Prior Depth—or tacitly and directly, by the inherently thought-free nervous system and brain as a whole, and At, and In, and By the egoless Transcendental, Spiritual, and Self-Evidently Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State That Always Already Is, Prior to egoic “self”-identification with the body-mind-“self”.”
The listening process is not just struggling with the practices, the disciplines, all that, that’s all just something to do.
The listening process is this profound consideration, engages Ishta-Guru-Bhakti Yoga, making use of the technical elements of practice, of the “conscious process” and conductivity”. The disciplines and such are simply the order, the structure, within which you do this profound consideration, because you cannot become profound in it or one pointed in it if you don’t simply establish those disciplines covering everything. There will always be vacation-land for you.
In The Way Of The Heart, The Practice Of self-Enquiry Is First Developed As A Formal and Rudimentary Activity, Whereby the conditional self, and, Thus, the entire body-mind, Is Simply Observed and “Considered”, and Felt Beyond. This Original Practice Of self-Enquiry Is Based On Simplest Listening, or The Beginners Devotional Feeling-Contemplation Of My Own Sign, and Also The Beginners Devotional “Consideration” Of My Full-Given Word and Storied Leelas, and Also The Beginners Devotional “Consideration” and Application Of The Basic functional, practical, relational, and Cultural Disciplines Given By Me To All Practitioners Of The Way Of The Heart. And This Original Practice Of self-Enquiry Is Experimentally Engaged, Along With The Similarly Experimental, and Formal, and Rudimentary Pondering Of My Arguments Relative To Divine Ignorance, During The Student-Beginner Stage Of The Way Of The Heart.
The Way Of The Heart Is Begun Through The Practice Of Listening, but The Way Of The Heart Becomes Directly Effective Only With Real and True Hearing. Therefore, Listening To The Point Of Hearing Is The First Ordeal.
“The practice of Adidam is not about listening to Me talk all the time as if there were something I must yet say in order to convince people to be devotees of Mine. Indeed, there is nothing that I can say to make people devotees of Mine. People will become My devotees only if they notice Me and are (thereby) moved to Me. That is it.”
For a full inquiry of ‘LISTENING’ go to Beezone Study on ‘Listening’
In The Way Of The Heart, Whether It Develops In:
The Manner Of The Devotional Way Of Insight Or
In The Manner Of The Devotional Way Of Faith.
“I consider the progress of this practice stage by stage. On the other hand, you must look at yourself in any stage and pass through these stages – either simply surrender to the Divine Condition or, via understanding, enquiry, and Recognition, cut through them in this most radical sense. Either approach is fine. They are equally direct if they are done most profoundly”.
The first period of the first practicing stage of the technically “fully elaborated” form of the way of the heart, the student-beginner must have already chosen either the listening beginners form of the devotional way of insight or the listening beginners form of the devotional way of faith. And the student-beginner must already have effectively practiced either the listening beginners form of the devotional way of insight or the listening beginners form of the devotional way of faith.
Sighting Me – Devotional Recognition Response – Respond to Me
Devotional recognition-response to Me is not merely conventional (or nominal) devotionalism. To devotionally recognize Me and devotionally respond to Me is to have come into the Intrinsic Feeling-Apprehension of My Intrinsically egoless and Self-Evidently Divine State. To devotionally recognize Me is to Find Me As My State. To devotionally respond to Me is to turn to Me As My State, and to devotionally Commune with Me through sensitivity to My Avatarically Self-Transmitted Transcendental Spiritual (and Always Blessing) Divine Presence. By Means of simply Sighting Me, one who devotionally recognizes Me and devotionally responds to Me is, thus and thereby, turned to Me by Means of Intrinsic Feeling-Apprehension of My Divine Avataric Self-Transmission of My Intrinsically egoless Self-“Bright” State.
Conscious Process Is the Epitome of This Way
The conscious process is part of the total affair of practice, which involves the transcendence of the ego, or conditional attention. The conscious process develops by stages–it has a number of forms.
From the beginning it may simply have the form of prayer or enquiry.
The Conscious process goes through stages of development as the individual matures, but the conscious process is not the whole of the practice.
The practice is associated with supportive disciplines that are secondary but necessary, such as
1. The dietary discipline,
2. General health discipline,
3. The discipline of sexuality,
4. And of service.
All of these disciplines come under the heading of what I call conductivity. That total regime of practice, exercised within the devotional culture, is indicated by the single term, the conscious process.
The conscious process is the epitome of the Way and its most fundamental exercise, but it is necessarily associated with this total culture of life.
For a full inquiry in ‘CONSCIOUS PROCESS AND CONDUCTIVITY’ see Beezone Study of ‘Conscious Process’.
This practice of conductivity is a great art. Therefore, the practice develops over time as you magnify this hearing and seeing in the form of an effective life-practice. But in terms of what there is to observe about it locally, the ultimate change that develops through that practice of conductivity is a change in your capacity to be responsible for the full openness of this frontal line of your manifest existence.
The descending current is the dimension of this process of conductivity that must be realized and practiced first, for all the reasons that I have discussed. It is also important to apply that descending process relative to health.
Conductivity
The practice of spiritual conductivity, such as relaxing from base to crown, feeling from the heart in all directions, and breathing or circulating the Life-Current bodily. Those elements of the practice are present, particularly aligned to the practice of the cycle of reception-release, inhaling in descent and exhaling to release limitations and blocks.
The particular practice at this stage is to begin the cycle of the revelation of the Life-Current. The practitioner receives it in the frontal line, stabilizes It there, and becomes responsible for neurotic blocks and reactivity that reverse the Current or throw It off.
Practice continues at this stage until the descending Current shows evidence in the life of the individual. Other signs of meditation are also to be observed and taken into account, but the sign of growth is in the evidence of the descending Power.
And
This Way Is Not a ‘Way of Conductivity’, nor a Spirit Religion, nor a Fourth or Fifth Stage Practice
For a full inquiry in ‘CONSCIOUS PROCESS AND CONDUCTIVITY’ see Beezone Study of ‘Conscious Process’.
You must give up your life, the identification with this rhythm, this contraction, this recoil that defines you. And how do you give it up? It is impossible. It cannot be done by the one who would do it.
No one can transcend the rhythmic contraction of the heart, which defines our consciousness, except by the most perfect and absolute sacrifice.
For a full inquiry into the ‘EGO’ see Beezone Study on ‘Development of Ego’
Experience
The practice is not to eliminate the patterns. It is to be aware of the patterns, playfully using the self-understanding that arises in association with the occasion. This is how the emotional-sexual practice becomes a mode of Ruchira Avatara Bhakti Yoga. It is not an interference. In every circumstance, there should be full playful participation in this Yoga in which you go beyond and it becomes, therefore a transformative act and not an analysis by which you attempt to get rid of some pattern or content.
The practice must cover everything, ultimately. Its about relinquishing all modifications. They attract attention. They control your body. They control your emotion. They control your breath. The modifications-when they become the focus of your life-are common bondage. That’s “bonding” to the world. Its “bonding” to modifications of That Which is the Truth.
The first thing to do is not to believe some proposition or to become absorbed in the practice of a remedial technique. The first thing to do is to observe yourself, consider your motivations, consider your habits and activities, beliefs, and desires. Consider your thinking. Consider the thoughts that you find persuasive. Consider all the traditions with which you are, or may become, familiar. Consider the whole thing, to the point of understanding the mechanism motivating you to seek Truth or Reality or God or Enlightenment, because it is only if you will observe and understand and transcend that mechanism that Truth or Reality or God or Enlightenment becomes Realizable. Not otherwise. Not ever otherwise.
The practice of reading, systematically studying, thinking about, and talking about My Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealing Leelas and My Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealing Word has its necessary use as a basic practical support for right and true practice of the Reality-Way of Sighting Me and Listening to Me..
Realization and The Way
There are two primary elements to practice in My Company: Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, with all of the practices associated with it, and the process of self-understanding and self-transcendence. These are the two elements. They both must be very strong if there are to be any significant transitions in the Way of the Heart.
In The Way Of The Heart, “Radical” Understanding Is The Practice, and Divine Ignorance Is The Ultimate Realization.
Practice – Overall Name = “Ishta-Guru-Bhakti” Yoga Practices
THE ELEMENTS
“To practice fruitfully, therefore, there must be self-understanding. Self-understanding is fundamental to the practice of the Way of the Heart from the beginning. That is why the practice is called “listening” from the beginning. It is real “consideration”, from the beginning.”
“Practice…requires the capability of feeling the primary sensation of the self-contraction and feeling beyond it.”
AVATARA ADI DA: Well, truly, you’re only willing to feel that knot that motivates you when you simultaneously, Gracefully, discover What Transcends it and are Given a Wisdom that communicates itself to you so that you know how to go beyond it. In other words, individuals will automatically dissociate from this depth unless they can somehow come to terms with it through the Graceful discovery of What Transcends it and the finding of Wisdom to deal with it. So when all those things coincide, and all of a sudden you find you’re able to feel this thing that motivates you, this knot, this disturbance, because you know that there’s something you can do about it, then there is the What to Realize that’s beyond it.
For a full inquiry of ‘self-contraction’ see Beezone Study on ‘The Knot of self-Contraction’.
“Discipline is difficult. On the one hand it is possible and on the other hand it is not possible. Possible or not, it is difficult. All the weight of your old adaptations pulls against this new motion, because you have never moved in that new way before. You do not have any tendencies in its direction. Therefore you must live to God for a long time before Divine Life becomes your tendency. After you have lived the discipline long enough, then the being acquires a new momentum. The discipline becomes pleasurable, no longer an effort directed against egoic tendencies. But you have to live the entire discipline for a while. Every part of this discipline is a Lawful demand that will work against a condition to which you have already adapted”.
The Principle, or Great Mover, of the…practice…is not discipline itself, but Distraction by Me and Attachment to Me.
“The secret of the process: to be able to hear and to move on the basis of hearing to the point that the trend of the whole body-being is toward God rather than toward the ego. This movement is not in some central location of the being – it is the whole body-being. We are translated in our consciousness and in our energy into the Divine Realization, not just inwardly, not just mentally, not just subjectively (ABSTRACT or CULTIC), but completely, as the whole body”.
“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”.
“The first levels of this practice, the first three stages, are essentially purification. True Samadhi appears only at the end of the third stage. Absorption’s in one yogic process and another are still associated with purification in the first three stages. The process at those levels is the awakening, through hearing, of feeling-attention”.
AVATARA ADI DA: You are to stand in that position of that knot, feeling your own dis-ease, motivation.
DEVOTEE: Its so painful just to feel that, though.
AVATARA ADI DA: But its there anyway. [Devotee: Yeah.] So you must embrace this Way and actually go beyond it.
But that means you have to endure it over the period of your sadhana. There’s not only the fundamental knot itself. There are all of its reflections in the body-mind, tendencies of one kind or another, and so on. You have to endure the purification of these things by standing in the knot-position, sensitive to all the limitations of your disposition, and surrender to Me to the point of forgetting it, relinquishing it, keeping the faculties all focused in Me, in this Communion Only then do you make this knot obsolete.
You initially go through a process of purification where the resultant knots, the different kinds of behaviors, attitudes, and so forth, that bind you appear. These must be purified through the initial stages of sadhana.
Rightly conservative “self”-discipline of the whole body is fundamental to the practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam (or Adidam Ruchiradam).
You should assist this process through two natural disciplines, one which is practical or humanly based, and one which is spiritual.
For a full inquiry of ‘DISCIPLINE’ see Beezone Study on ‘Discipline’.
The practical discipline which assists this turning or Communion is the practice of
1. minimizing the degree and kinds of exploitation of life in your own case.
This involves, to whatever degree you are able,
1. the study of listening to teachings about God and Divinely realized individuals;
2. the maintenance of a productive work life and the effort of service,
3. compassion and love for all human and earthly beings;
4. the keeping of a clean, orderly, healthful, and pleasurable environment for yourself and your companions;
5. the adoption of a healthful and “harmless diet (an essentially lacto-vegetarian diet that involves, to whatever degree possible, non-killing of higher creatures, who possess the sense of independent existence);
6. the confinement of sexuality to a single partner;
7. and an orientation toward human community and
8. service to the common life.
This practical discipline should be fulfilled by you to whatever degree you find the capacity in yourself. To whatever degree you fail or find yourself unable to fulfill this discipline, simply observe yourself, be easy, be full of enjoyment, make your actions at least an indulgence that does not harm others, and continue to turn to God with feeling, from the heart.
The practice is to steadily engage relational disciplines, and to persist in an ordinary life of service, study, and positive or moral restraint of functions. If this is done, you will observe that the heat of discipline becomes a purifying and transforming current of life. Then, secondarily, you will notice that the signs of old adaptations are gradually transformed, becoming less and less gross, less and less frequent, until, at last, they cease to arise or to qualify the natural Intuition or Radiance in Ignorance.
THE NECESSARY FOUNDATION OF RIGHT LIFE
“Four faculties” (attention, feeling, body, and breath)
All experience binds unless there is ego transcending practice.
Rightly conservative “self”-discipline of the whole body is fundamental to the practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam (or Adidam Ruchiradam).
Serve the practice of devotional turning to Me.
The practice of the Reality-Way of Adidam requires the devotional recognition-response to Me, and the moment to moment turning of the four principal faculties to Me.
That does not begin only when you come into the “inner temple” of fully established practice of the Reality-Way of Adidam-it must happen even in the “outer temple” of approach and adaptation to the Reality-Way of Adidam.
“The practice is not just a matter of trying to feel Me. It is a fierce effort of surrender to Me. You must exercise the surrender of the faculties of body, emotion, mind, and breath in order to go beyond yourself. It is not comfortable. You must steal these faculties from their common ‘objects’. When you try to do it, the limit is revealed. This becomes True Hearing of Me–the understanding of the single fact that is your ego-possession. Then there is the capability, in any circumstance, and in every stage of practice-demonstration from then on, to enter into devotional Communion with Me.”
Formal Student Practices
The Practice Of Disciplines Which Are Associated With The First Three Stages Of Life, and Which Are Progressively Associated With Heart-Surrender Into The Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life.
Practice Of The Way Of The Heart In The Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life Begins In The Student-Beginner Stage,
Then It Develops Responsively
In The First Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart,
Becomes Full
In The Second Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart, and
Develops
In The Third Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart.
For a full inquiry in ‘THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE’
see Beezone Study:
Adaptation to the Third Stage of Life and the Call to The Fourth Stage Stage.
The first three (or foundation) stages of life are lived and fulfilled in an ego-transcending devotional disposition, or (as He Describes it) “in the original (or beginners) devotional context of the fourth stage of life”.
In The First Practicing Stage self-Understanding Develops Relative To The First Three Stages Of Life, and, By This, The Heart Is Prepared To Feel In The Spiritual Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life.
In The Student-Novice Ordeal Of Listening, Are Only Beginning To Adapt To
The daily Formal Meditative Practice, Via Random Name-Invocation Of Me, and As Feeling-Contemplation Of Me Via My Murti, and As Feeling-Contemplation Of Me Via Representations Of My “Living Murti”,
Should Meditate each day For A Minimum Of fifteen minutes to one-half hour In the early morning, and Again In the evening, and they Should Gradually Increase the length of the periods Of Formal Meditative Sitting Over time.
In Order To Be Formally Accepted and Formally Acknowledged As A Student-Beginner In The Way Of The Heart, The Student-Novice Must Be
Consistently Sitting In Formal Meditation For At Least one-half hour each morning and For At Least fifteen minutes to one-half hour each evening.
And
The Formally Acknowledged Student-Beginner Should Gradually Increase the length of the periods Of daily Sitting In Formal Meditative Exercise.
The Basically Prepared Student-Beginner, and The Mature Student-Beginner, and Every Beginning “Lay Congregationist”
Must Sit In Formal Meditation For At Least a full hour each morning and For At Least forty-five minutes each evening.
And, Optimally,
Those Two Principal Occasions Of daily Meditation Should Occupy a full one and one-half hours each morning and a full hour each evening.
However, Practitioners who Would Make The Transition From The Student-Beginner Stage Of The Way Of The Heart To The First Period Of The First Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart
Must Already Sit In Formal Meditation For a full one and one-half hours each morning and For one hour each evening.
As A Prerequisite For The Transition To
The First Period Of The First Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart,
The Student-Beginner Must Have Already Chosen Either The Listening Beginners Form Of The Devotional Way Of Insight
Or The Listening Beginners Form Of The Devotional Way Of Faith.
And The Student-Beginner Must Already Have Effectively Practiced Either
The Listening Beginners Form Of The Devotional Way Of Insight Or The Listening Beginners Form Of The Devotional Way Of Faith.
For a full inquiry in ‘THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE’
see Beezone Study:
Adaptation to the Third Stage of Life and the Call to The Fourth Stage Stage.
That is what hearing is to realize that all of it — when you are at your best, when you are at your worst, whatever angle you have on it, however you may be thinking about it–is simply the self-contraction, the actual present-time dramatization of the avoidance of relationship. It is all that. There is not some sort of thought about it you can have or examination of it you can enter into that is different from doing the self-contraction. It is all the doing of the self-contraction.
Hearing is not the case until there is this most fundamental capability, universal to the character, such that movement beyond the self-knot can be demonstrated every moment. And if that is done, of course, then it deals with whatever associations there may be in any moment, you see. Whatever the circumstances, whatever the qualities otherwise of the body-mind, in any moment there still is this fundamental root-capability. That’s the profound nature of hearing. Its not enough to be purified some, based on My Teaching and devotional Yoga and such, not enough to be purified of some things and have it be hearing. So, this matter of people making (transitions) and otherwise which we’ve been discussing, requires this capability.
Hearing is the capability to transcend the self-contraction, because you’re in the root position, which is the equivalent of the closed fist, in your own nature. You are right in that position, you’re noticing that you are clenching your fist and that’s why your hand hurts, and you open your hand up. You see? Or another simile I’ve Given is that you’re pinching yourself, and you’re suffering the pain, and you’re thinking and emoting, trying to do all kinds of things to be relieved of this, and you never figure it out, and the pain is constant. Then, maybe somebody points it out to you, or you somehow notice that you’re pinching yourself, and you take your hand away and all of a sudden the pain is gone. Well, hearing is this discovery of your own fundamental action that is the root and cause and nature of your own disturbance and your search. So its not meditating on the self-contraction and regretting it. Its enjoying the capability of going beyond it.
For a full inquiry of ‘hearing’ see Beezone Study on ‘hearing’.
“…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.
Such understanding is what I call “hearing” and such conversion is what I call “seeing.” It is only when such hearing and seeing prevail that the practice of the Way can begin.
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.
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”.
For a full inquiry of ‘self-observation see Beezone Study on ‘self-observation’.
Equanimity
Spiritual Sila Is One Of The Key Means For All Advanced and Ultimate Practice Of The Way Of The Heart.
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”.
Equanimity – Servant not Product
“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.
For a full inquiry of HEARING go to Beezone Study on ‘Hearing’
For a full inquiry of ‘EQUANIMITY’ go to Beezone Study on ‘Equanimity’
SELF UNDERSTANDING and EQUANIMITY
The technical understanding of this matter of love. This is esoteric Teaching. This is secret stuff. But it cannot be secret anymore. It must be made available. Its availability does not mean that you will be able or willing to do it, however. That is the test-whether you will do it.
Before you can do it, before you can love absolutely, you must
1. understand yourself sufficiently
2. to stand straight, without contraction in body, emotion, or mind.
3. Consider my basic Argument to the point of Standing Free of this contraction so that you can
4. notice, locate, and be available to this Living Reality, this Self-Radiant Being or Condition of all beings, all forms, all worlds.
Once this equanimity is true of you, you Commune with That, and develop more and more self-understanding through real self-observation. You use the various aspects of this Teaching that serve self-understanding in very specific, practical terms. You develop the practical disciplines of equanimity and God-Communion, of life and meditation.
When all that matures, when you really have done all that, when you are an advanced practitioner, a spiritually mature personality, then life becomes the Magnification of that Wisdom in every moment, in all relations, under all circumstances, in every stage. Likewise, meditation or the secret act of Communion with the Divine becomes utter absorption, transcendence of self absolutely. It becomes Enlightenment. That is the business of maturity, the life of Wisdom and the meditation of Enlightenment.
The Second Practicing Stage The Edge Of Practice Moves From The Listening and Hearing Process To The Great Process Of Seeing.
Seeing Is self-Transcending Participation In What Is.
Seeing Is Love.
Seeing, or Love, Is Able To “Locate”, Acknowledge, and Feel My All-Pervading Spiritual Radiance.
Therefore, Seeing Is Heart-Felt and Whole bodily Identification Of The Love-Bliss-Presence and Person Of The Divine.
Seeing Is Spiritually Activated Conversion Of attention, emotion, and the Total psycho-physical personality From self-Contraction To The Spiritual Form Of God,
This Via My Spirit-Baptism
Seeing Is Spontaneous Devotional Sacrifice Of the self-Contraction.
Seeing Is The self-Transcending Reorientation Of conditional Existence To The Transcendental, Inherently Spiritual, and Inherently Perfect Divine Self-Condition In Whom conditional self and conditional worlds Apparently arise and Always Already Inhere.
My Spirit-Baptism Awakens Signs In and Of The Middle Station Of The Heart In My Devotee. In The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Course Of The Way Of The Heart, That Baptism Is To Occur, To Real Effect, During The Second Practicing Stage. At That Stage, The Spiritual Basis For The Lovelessness That Was egoically Associated with The Second Stage Of Life Is To Be Directly Transcended Through The Grace-Given Spiritual Conversion To Love. That Is To Say, By True Seeing, the frontal personality Is To Be Released From the Spiritual limitation that Diminishes Love, and the Truly Spiritual socialization of the frontal personality Through Love Is Thereby To Be Set In Motion.
For a full inquiry on ‘SEEING’ see Beezone Study on ‘Seeing’
I speak not only about that change but of the entire spiritual process to the point of ultimate Realization. Mankind in general, however, is struggling with the step from the third to the fourth stage of life. Individuals like to think about, feel into, and consider the higher stages of life, but in reality they are involved in the neuroses of the first three stages of life, struggling with the possible transition to the fourth stage.
People everywhere are profoundly resistive to the matter of actual spiritual practice. Individuals are inclined to continue in the third stage of life and not to go through the crisis of a transition beyond it.
“The ‘yoga’ of the frontal personality takes place in the context of the fourth stage of life. It is a matter of the submission of the “gross body” and the total “frontal” personality to the heart-principle.”
The Third Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Is The Most Basic Technically “Elaborate” Practicing Stage Associated With The Fully Established “Basic” Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life. During That Stage Of The Technically “Elaborate” Practice, the individual Is To Complete The Work Of Growth Beyond the ordinary limits Of The First Three Stages Of Life By Fully Integrating the frontal personality With The By Grace Revealed Spiritual Reality. Therefore, In The Context Of The Third Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart, the frontal personality Is To Be Spiritually Purified, Spiritually Balanced, and Made Full Of Spirit-Life, Through The Ecstatic Yoga Of Devotional self-Sacrifice, In Which The Frontal Line Of the body-mind Is Spiritually Converted To Divine Love-Communion By The Constant Exercise Of The Spiritually Awakened Heart. – The Dawn Horse Testament.
All of this is just conversation you see until you can stably enter into the practice of the fourth stage, until you can hear this Teaching and surrender into the Life Current of the Living God with feeling, whole bodily. Not only in your formal devotional practice but in all of the forms of activity you engage in every day. You must be morally transformed, you must be physically transformed, you must practice the principles of a moral and physically transformed life, as a daily regimen, without fail, that’s what the conditions of practice are about.
“In this Way or Yoga, the “seven stages of life” and the “seven practicing stages” do not correspond to one another exactly (number by number), except in the… fifth, sixth, and seventh stages of life respectively. Practicing stages one through four…is initially a culture of adaptation to (or toward) the fourth stage of life, and then, progressively, to the seventh, stage by stage. (Of course, the “Radical” or “Perfect” Disposition of the seventh stage of life informs and inspires the practice at every stage of the Way that I Teach.)”
Making the transition to the fourth stage of life is the best almost anyone on earth is at the present time. Most people are involved in lesser stages of complication or growth. Very few people on earth are entered into higher stages than the fourth. And the urge of the Teaching in the world is to draw people toward the fourth stage of life, which is the foundation of higher existence or human sacrifice.
For a full inquiry in ‘THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE’
see Beezone Study:
Adaptation to the Third Stage of Life and the Call to The Fourth Stage Stage.
The practice is to:
Conduct the Spirit Power bodily,
The Practice Of Spirit-Conductivity Begins When You Are Baptized By and In and To My Mere and Blessing Presence.
“The Spirit” is a name for it, you see. To call it the Spirit is appropriate because this name designates the breath and emotion through which we recognize the Spirit.
To surrender into the Spirit in every moment is to Commune with the Transcendental Being.
To “see” the Spirit is to see the Vision of God. It is a whole bodily realization, like the realization that the body has at the level of touch. It is profound, psychic, prior to bodily and mental configurations.
The total being of the body-mind touches the Infinite Being of the Spirit, surrenders into the Spirit with every breath, whole bodily, on the basis of true emotion, love-surrender. That surrender is the epitome and the practice of the Way of Truth.
The general practice I have Given you is not about observing breaths, counting breaths, noticing breaths in any technical fashion. It is about entering into relationship with Me via the breath, Communing with Me via the breath. The breath is not the subject of your practice. I Am! All the faculties of the body-mind must be devoted to Me, and, since breath is a primary faculty, you must exercise yourself in relation to Me via the breath. The practice is not to get very curious about the breaths themselves, or finicky about breathing. It is to devote yourself to Me completely and to use the leading faculties of the body-mind as a principal mechanism for it. It is a devotional practice, then, not merely a functional one.
Constantly serve (or love) the Spiritual Master and all beings,
Maintain the equanimity of the body-mind through functional self-discipline.
Hearing, seeing, and practicing all originate, develop, and mature in the Transcendental, Spiritual, and Radiant Initiatory Company of the Adept Spiritual Master. The Fullness of Realization is necessarily dependent on Transmission (or Grace).
In the Company of Truth I(Satsang)
This is what must be understood. And it is understood not in the context trying to figure it out or meditating on the self-contraction. It is understood in the responsive Yoga of Ishta-Guru-Bhakti, or the practice of surrendering and forgetting separate self in Communion with Me. That is the Yoga.
The Fourth Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Is The Stage Of “Advanced” Practice In The Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life. And The Fourth Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Is The Stage Of Transition From The Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life To The Fifth Stage Of Life. The Transition From The Third Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart To The Fourth Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Is The Transition From “Elaborate” Technical Practices Predominantly Associated With The Frontal Line and the frontal personality To “Elaborate” Technical Practices Predominantly Associated With The Spinal Line and Evolutionary self-Transcendence Through Devotional Ascent. Practice During The Fourth Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Must Continue, In the ordinary daily circumstance, To Submit the frontal personality To Divine Communion, but The Primary Practice To Which My Devotees Are Called In The Fourth Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Is That Of Devotional self-Submission From The Anahata Chakra , Which Releases The Spirit-Current Up Into The Spinal Line and To The Ajna Door. And The Fifth Stage Of Life Has Begun When Devotional Concentration, or Ascending Feeling-Contemplation, At The Ajna Door Is Steady In daily Meditation Practice.
For a full inquiry in ‘THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE’
see Beezone Study:
Adaptation to the Third Stage of Life and the Call to The Fourth Stage Stage.
TURN TO ME – Tautology and Paradox
The Primary Practice
The Way of Realizing the “Bright” is the Way of constant turning to Him with all the faculties of the being the mind, emotion, breath, and body.
This turning is true devotion, a relinquishment of ego.
Moment to Moment
The Present (or moment to moment) Urge Toward Perfectly self-Transcending God-Realization Must Be Constantly Intensified and Increased, If Actual (or Really Effective) self-Transcendence (and, Thereby, Growth Through and Beyond Any Present Stage Of Life In The Way Of The Heart) Is To Occur.
The Dawn Horse Testament
DEVOTEE: Well, what has been Revealed to me on this retreat is that I have a direct relationship to You that is . . .
HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: You do not have it at all.
DEVOTEE: I do not have it?
HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: Mmm. The notion that you have it is imaginary.
DEVOTEE: I see.
HEART-MASTER DA LOVE-ANANDA: Relationship to Me is a matter of your action . The relationship to the Sat-Guru is resort to the Sat-Guru. To surrender to the Sat-Guru is to transcend oneself in every moment of that relationship. It is not that you walk around having it, and some thoughts you have about it are real and others are imaginary. There is no relationship to Me if this activity of resort, or surrender, is not the activity in the moment. Everything else is imaginary, then, or wrong relationship, you could say.
The relationship for real is characterized by your resort to it. That is what makes it real, not some thoughts you have about it, but your submission of those thoughts, the transcendence of mind, through resorting to Me. Your relationship to Me is an activity, what one could call a counter-egoic activity. It is not that some ideas or thoughts about it are real, or non-imaginary, and others are unreal, or imaginary, you see. This relationship has nothing to do with your thoughts. It is entirely about your resort, your surrender. You enter into My Sphere through such activity. You make right use of Me by such activity.
The Love-Ananda Gita
The Real practice of the transcending of egoity requires a constant confrontation with the “difference” between the two dimensions of the One and Only Reality. Those two dimensions of the One and Only and Indivisible Reality are the Non-conditional Dimension of Reality and the conditional dimension of Reality.
First, there must be a constant (moment to moment, and really and truly effective) confrontation with the ego-made limit on the expressed Urge toward Most Perfectly ego-Transcending Real-God-Realization. That is to say, the present (or moment to moment) Urge toward Most Perfectly ego-Transcending Real-God-Realization must be constantly intensified and increased, if actual transcending of egoity is to occur.
Aletheon
“My Spiritual Presence Stands Prior to whatever may be arising in the moment, Prior to that motion, that vision, that sensation. It is fine if the experience arises, but to transcend that binding power of this tendency you must Find Me, you must “Locate Me”, you must feel Me. Otherwise, the experience leads to involvement in another independent and self-possessed state of existence”
The Love-Ananda Gita
“How can you engage in anything counter-egoic if you do not understand egoity? You may be doing things to work against the results of egoity and to try to feel a little better, but to be practicing Truth, to be practicing truly counter-egoic activity, you must understand the ego, you must be in the place of understanding it.”
You are already in that place! You are doing this act! What is so remarkable is that you cannot grasp this fact.
To persist in that turning means that you cannot avoid anything. All the contents of mind, emotion, the obstructions in the breath, and the knots in the body stand out more than ever.
But the practice is to give attention to Avatar Adi Da Samraj—not to struggle with anything
“How can you turn to me? Even trying to turn to Me is not how to turn to Me, because that itself could be an ego-effort. In that case, you will be a mummer, playing at devotion – seeming, bowing and scraping, genuflecting, wearing labels of states of practice, and all the rest of it. Everything is made into complete nonsense.
How do you become turned to Me? Through devotional recognition-response to Me. That statement itself is a paradox and tautology. The practice is not a matter of just following an instruction from me telling you to turn to me. If just telling you to turn would do it it would be simply following my instructions. But it doesn’t work that way.”
Turning to Me is not a dissociative strategy. You are not moving away from something and turning to something else. It is not a movement of attention from something to something else. In your presumed practice of turning to Me, you have added the “method” of turning away from what is in the field of view of the faculties. That is not the practice. That is something you are egoically adding to the practice. Some form of religion. You are applying a willful religious “method” of your own, and not simply resting the faculties in Me. That is the cult. That is narcissus. You have put a priest between yourself and Me. It is your own ego, your own mind. It is performing the practice for you. You must relinquish your association with this priest.
Turn your attention to me and do not measure that turning relative to whether or not your mind stops and you feel better. Love me and do not measure that against whether or not you still feel negative emotions and confusion. Give your life to me, turn to me bodily, recollect me at all times, whether I am physically present with you or not, and do not measure that activity against whether or not you feel pains in your body. Maintain that discipline of turning to me. It can be done, as long as you do not associate that turning with the reading of the problems in you. The turning can always be done. You are never disabled in terms of that turning. It is only these effects, because you are always reading them and wanting to manipulate them, that make you doubt your ability to turn.
But you can always turn. That is the principle wherein these effects become obsolete, not in that moment necessarily, although on some occasions they disappear immediately. But ultimately they disappear, because they are not being used. What you are doing is this turning. They are simply memories presently communicating themselves as your functions. They are a kind of remembering. But when your conscious life becomes participation in relationship to me, then these effects become obsolete. It is not for you to measure that process, to decide when they should become obsolete. Be willing to have these things arise in you forever. Make your business turning to me.
“Therefore, at last there is no turning within, and no strategy without, but dissolution in Ignorance-Radiance itself.”
For a full inquiry in to ‘TURN TO ME’ see Beezone Study ‘Counter Egoic Activity’
“Sadhana or spiritual practice begins in that place where you make this knot, the self contraction, this fundamental discomfort. It has the characteristic of fear and you basically experience that fear as a kind of anxiety in the pit of your stomach.
If you are not really in touch with this self-contraction, you at times may experience the anxiety that is constantly underlying and motivating your behavior, your moment to moment existence. With this anxiety, you build all kinds of stuff on top of it and desensitize yourself to it. This self-contraction is the quality of anxiety, of your moment to moment existence and it is a stressful anxiety.
You may want to forestall the observation of this uncomfortable feeling, that realization. But you can’t begin real spiritual life unless you start to observe and understand the mechanism of it. But once you do and get bit, that’s it! Unless you find yourself out you will be continually running from it, covering it over with all kinds of enquires, philosophies, psychological investigations and all other mental means of avoiding something deep in your psyche. Once you do observe this fundamental contraction, then you can’t escape it, and that’s when sadhana really begins. That’s when sadhana starts becoming profoundly effective.“
The spiritual discipline that should accompany the practical discipline of this way of Communion is a voluntary exercise of the remembrance of God from the heart that coordinates the body, the life-force, and the mind with the breath.
Practice Of The Way Of The Heart (and The First and Basic, or Frontal, Spiritual Yoga Of The Way Of The Heart) In The Context Of The Fully Established (or Actually Seeing) “Basic” Fourth Stage Of Life Takes Place
In The Context Of The Third Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart (or, Otherwise, In The Context Of The Technically “Simpler”, or Even “Simplest”, “Lay Congregationist” Practice Of The Way Of The Heart, Once Such Practice Is Formally Acknowledged To Be Based On Both True Hearing and Real Seeing, and, On That Basis, To Be Capable Of The First and Basic, or Frontal, Spiritual Yoga Of The Way Of The Heart).
And,
If An Early Transition Is Not Made To The “Perfect Practice” Of The Way Of The Heart In The Context Of The Sixth Stage Of Life, The adult Practitioner Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Should Continue Practice In The Context Of The Fourth Stage Of Life By Transitioning To
The Fourth Practicing Stage Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart, Wherein and Whereby The Transition Should Eventually Be Made Either To Practicing
The Stage Five Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart Or, Even More Directly, To
Practicing Stage Six Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart, Before
The Final Transition Is Made To Practicing Stage Seven Of The Technically “Fully Elaborated” Form Of The Way Of The Heart.
For a full inquiry in ‘THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE’
see Beezone Study:
Adaptation to the Third Stage of Life and the Call to The Fourth Stage Stage.
“It is only at the end of the third stage of this Way that attention itself is translated into the Divine. Even at that stage the feeling dimension is yet to be translated into the Divine. That translation is the business of the fourth stage of spiritual practice, the true, spiritual stage of life. Then you are free of all subjective changes and all the tendencies and commitments of this and all other worlds. You are no longer the independent ego. You are in Communion, one with the absolute Consciousness. Spiritual practice truly begins then. The ultimate sacrifice or translation into the Divine occurs then, and not before”.
In the Great Process of the Way of Divine Ignorance, body and mind are ecstatically released or surrendered into Life, or the Fullness of Divine Radiance. Thus, as the Process matures, the structures and functions of the body-mind first awaken and then become a sacrifice into their Source-Condition.
The most difficult stage is the one of transition from Lawless, subhuman existence to the responsible beginning of spiritual life in the Way of Divine Communion. After that, the whole affair is more creative and freely voluntary. Thus, in the earliest stages of life, where personal, moral, and religious preparation is developed, much attention still remains in reactive and self-indulgent physical, emotional, and mental patterns. But as the stages of true practice of the Way develop, there is less and less of the mechanical and self-conscious attachment to the structures of the body-mind.
As the Way of Relational Enquiry develops, the entire lower body-mind becomes Awake in the prior Fullness of the Divine. Thus, social, dietary, sexual, and other areas of habit and obsession gradually relax and are sublimed through ecstatic Communion with the Divine. As a result, by the time the devotee makes the transition to the Way of Re-cognition, there is no longer any overriding need to indulge such habits, and he can easily and naturally maintain a daily practice that is wholly regenerative, moderate, and free of the accumulating effects of enervation, toxicity, distraction, reactivity, doubt, and unlove.
For a full inquiry in ‘THE CONTEXT OF THE FOURTH STAGE OF LIFE’
see Beezone Study:
Adaptation to the Third Stage of Life and the Call to The Fourth Stage Stage.
“…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”.
The practice of The Reality-Way of Adidam is, at last, Most Perfectly Self-Established by Grace in Perfect Freedom-Divinely Self-Recognizing all the forms of “self” and “not-self” that (apparently) arise.
“People who understand this principle get down to it, handle business, and bring me signs.
To rightly and truly engage the ego-transcending practice of the Reality-Way of Adidam is (inevitably) demanding, and even (at times) difficult – but the practice is, itself, never mere and egoic suffering. Rather, the practice is the ordeal associated with the transcending of egoity. It is the ordeal of right and true renunciation, right and true “self”-discipline. That ego-transcending ordeal of “self”-discipline is necessary. That ordeal is, itself, the substance of change, the alchemy of change. That ordeal is the “fire on the pot”-into which you must throw everything.
The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is the transcending of everything, Liberation from everything, in the Utter Freedom of egoless Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization.
Devotional life is constant attention to the Divine Presence, and participation, through real functional activity, in that Presence.
It is a constant test of the born life, because the born life wants to randomly fulfill its conflicting tendencies or desires.
The conscious life or the life of spiritual discipline wants to remain in God. Therefore, the Way of Divine Communion is a trial between these two motives.
“Most everyone will reach their cutoff point, the point where they will tend to stop, the point where practice tends to be sufficient for them or where further effort is too frustrating and too offensive. Everybody reaches the point where he or she tends to withdraw from the stream of practice. Most people reach that point even before they begin the practice. Either they are never moved to find anything greater than ordinary ego-fulfillment in the world, or they are just “fans” of spiritual life. They like the books, but they basically resist and even resent the interference represented by a Spiritual Master and a Teaching and the idea of practice.
The practice must occupy your entire life. You must devote your entire life to it. You must be devoted completely to it. Otherwise, being only superficially associated with it, you may perhaps realize a better life by virtue of your coming into my Company, but you will not fulfill the Way in your lifetime. Instead you will devote the Virtue of this Way, the Spiritual Transmission Awakened in my Company, to the ordinary purposes of your living, and fundamentally It will only grant Energy to the same thing you are already doing. Therefore, to the degree you are suffering, your suffering will be intensified. To the degree you are successful, your successes will be intensified. But you will never merely be successful. You will also become exaggerated and bastardize the Virtue that is given to you.
Practice in My Divine Avataric Company is about passing tests, such that the total body-mind constantly goes through ego-transcending changes and makes an always greater and always new ego-transcending demonstration.
The Practice accounts for the dual or dynamic nature of the body-mind, while it is also founded in the radical point of view of the Free soul. At every stage of the Way, right functional or whole bodily activity is the chosen principle, rather than any or all forms of exclusively subjective or internal and mental self-manipulation. The individual must change his action first, or else the contents of the mind, which are only a reflection of past actions, will not change. At every stage of the Way, the devotee is obliged to accept responsibility for a more and more total functional spectrum of action.
Practice in My Divine Avataric Company is a “hard school”, a persistently ego-transcending life-based upon
1. The Great Purpose of transcending all limitations,
2. Transcending the body-mind-complex itself, and
3. Transcending the cosmic domain itself.
To rightly and truly engage the ego-transcending practice of the Reality-Way of Adidam is (inevitably) demanding, and even (at times) difficult.
but the practice is, itself, never mere and egoic suffering.
Rather, the practice is the ordeal associated with the transcending of egoity.
It is the ordeal of right and true renunciation,
right and true “self”-discipline.
That ego-transcending ordeal of “self”-discipline is necessary.
That ordeal is, itself, the substance of change, the alchemy of change.
That ordeal is the “fire on the pot” – into which you must throw everything.
My devotees must fit themselves to right devotion to Me, and go through the living ordeal of right practice—moment to moment, and day by day. The process of life-rightening is an ordeal of shedding the ego-pattern, or the imagined persona. Therefore, that process of life-rightening is, necessarily, a process of renunciation. The patterns of egoity are built into the body-mind-complex as psycho-physical tendencies. Therefore, those patterns do not disappear merely because you come up with a notion about changing them. The life-rightening process must be profoundly engaged and persisted in, so that real turning away from, and real shedding of, ego-patterning occurs. That is a fundamental aspect of the “Radical” Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam—the “ordeal” aspect.
Right-life discipline is simply a necessary sign of the whole bodily devotional recognition-response to Me.
Indeed, profound whole bodily conformity to intrinsically ego-transcending right-life discipline (and, thus, to renunciation) is one of the necessary signs of true devotional recognition-response to Me and, Ultimately, of Perfect Realization of Me.
Therefore, in the “Radical” Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam, Realization and renunciation are the same.
In the “Radical” Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam, Realization and renunciation are not “two different things”.
It is simply that renunciation does not “cause” Realization—nor does Realization “cause” renunciation.
If you whole bodily recognize Me and whole bodily respond to Me, Realization and renunciation are both spontaneously evident and intrinsically coincident.
Self-contraction or identification with the body-mind coincides with infinite fear, the other. The sense of other or difference is fear, limitless fear. Feeling limitless fear with limitless opposites that are a distraction from fear, is life, bondage, seeking, driven from the void, perpetually, until there’s the perfect transcending of it all. Realization, then, is renunciation of it all–not merely by giving it up, but by transcending it inherently.
ADI DA SAMRAJ: And whatever you must do to bring yourself to enter into your own egoic “self-possession” in depth, that is what you must do. Until then, you will still be yammering about all the things you want to do out here and around–be the golden boy, sexy with everybody, selling big candy–just the stress itself registered by the search rather than the depth of the stress itself. When you enter into it deeply, you are discovering in that deepening that it is your own act, and the mere discovery of it is the relaxation of it. That is what you must find out. Try it out.
You all do not believe it is okay to lose interest in what is going on in life, in your life and in the lives of others around you and in the whole world. You think it is not okay. To lose interest to what is ordinarily going on is the secret of renunciation.
Errors of Reunication
The alpha strategy is motivated primarily by the desire to avoid conditional or psycho-physical pain and suffering. Since psycho-physical pain and suffering arise inevitably, in natural opposition to psycho-physical pleasure, the alpha strategist must avoid both pain and pleasure. Therefore, the alpha strategist is moved to escape or turn away from the total context of natural, bi-polar, and cosmic existence.
In India you hear all about renunciation and detachment. From the common Indian point of view renunciation means withdrawal, separation from functions and relations. But that separation is not true renunciation or true detachment.
The alpha strategist is motivated to avoid or escape the entire cycle of desiring, getting, having, and enjoying, because the alpha strategist is obsessed with the desire to desire not, to avoid pain, and to not suffer.
The alpha strategist is constantly struggling to avoid or escape from suffering, pain, pleasure, money, food, sex, fear, sorrow, anger, greed, lust, attachment, boredom, doubt, discomfort, conditional experience, conditional knowledge, and egoity.
The alpha strategist seeks to avoid conditional or psycho-physical pain or suffering to an absolute degree, but this is not possible within the context of conditional existence, or in the experience of the body-mind.
Alpha strategist suffers from the problem of the desire of desiring not to desire. And the chronic signs of this fault are too much dissociative effort, too much seeking to avoid or escape, too much external or merely apparent renunciation, and too much strategic control and suppression of body and mind.
The alpha strategist tends to manifest self-involved reserve, dryness, weakness, and a lack of sympathy or love for others.
Before you are My devotee, ego is king, or queen. When you become My devotee, ego is a servant -not meaning this in any demeaning sense, but meaning that there is a, different understanding of what should govern life. The ego-principle should not.
My true devotee does not make much of himself or herself. Practice is self surrender, self-forgetting–not merely in and of itself but in Communion with Me, by Communing with Me, by responding to Me.
Knowing this is what it means to wake up. And that awakening is where renunciation comes from, by the way. Not the seeker’s renunciation, already seeking, already self-bound, deciding to cut things off. Such is a game within the illusion. It is one of “Narcissus”‘ games. All your gestures, all-your adventures, all your proposals – they are all the same game.
Read more by Adi Da on Renunciation.
“The true devotee is constantly involved in perfect psycho-physical love of the Divine Person. This is the fulfillment of the sadhana or real life of understanding. All his thoughts are the attention of mind to the Divine Person. He need not consider only holy or cultic thoughts to be love of Him. All his speech is eloquent about the Divine Person. He need not consider only holy or cultic speech to be love of Him. All his actions are devotion to Him. He need not consider only holy or cultic actions to be love of Him. Then all that is received is received from Him, and by Him, in love. All that is yielded is yielded to Him, and by Him, in love.
Such a devotee is my own, and understanding, not the search by any means, is the Great Process wherein he is found in me. Therefore, I am devoted to this understanding in you. I will do nothing but serve this understanding in you. And by this same service you will gather all my own to me.”
Garbage and the Goddess – 1974
Aletheon
Nobody is taking you home
Beezone