In ‘The Sacred Space of Finding Me,’ page 135, there is a talk from Avatar Adi Da of August 26, 2004, entitled ‘Communion With Me In A Blissful Manner Is A Gift’ in which he talks about ‘finding yourself out.’ This concept of ‘finding yourself out’ is the topic of this page.
Finding yourself out is about the ‘search’ and the ‘ego.’ It’s discovering the ‘ego’ and discovering its ‘activity’ or constant motive, avoidance. “You are always creating this feeling of separation from this, that, or the other thing and then pursuing it. The thing for which you must become responsive is your own separative act. That is self-understanding.”
This is not unlike the famous Oxherding pictures of Mahayana Buddhism, which depict the spiritual journey in picture form. What makes Adi Da’s ‘discovery’ of ego different is his unique ‘conviction’ of ego. Adi Da eliminates the whole ‘search’ for the bull and starts with the ‘old dog’ of Nirmanakaya, the fully awakened state.
The following are direct quotes from Adi Da Samraj:
“You must find out about yourself. You are only seeking, but you are involved in the perpetual action of self-contraction, a devastating act, a self-deluding act most profound which is what makes existence what is traditionally called samsara.”
“I have been asking you this question for twenty-two (1993) years. “What are you doing? What are you always doing?” This question is among My Great Questions to you, and this is what I am addressing-what you are doing, not what you are thinking, not your imagination and your idealism, but what you are doing. Find out. Understand yourself by observing your activity. Eventually, you will see it in its depth, at its root, but the process always begins with the observation of obvious action.”
“You are living an allusion because of this act. You are only thinking, imagining you are in the real world. You are not aware of reality. You are perceiving an allusion. The world as you perceive it is an allusion.”
“Everything you think about it, everything you experience, everything you pursue, it’s all illusions. It’s based on a self-deluding act. You do not just “Oh, isn’t that amusing” self-contracted. It is most profound, a most profound matter. It’s controlling your life, and you’re unaware of it.”
“To find yourself out as a seeker, and then, instead of seeking, to deal directly with what is making you a seeker.”
“In the beginning, there’s another kind of process going on. It’s about finding yourself out. You have to get enough understanding of yourself to identify yourself as you are and let it be.”
“The first thing that must occur to truly authenticate your practice of the Way of the Heart is the response to Me.” “constant turning to Me is the context in which ‘self’ (ego) understanding takes place. This creates a kind of natural feedback, a reflection that is the reverse of “Narcissus” (the seeker).”
“It is a way of catching yourself at being “Narcissus” because you are looking a Me” and thus, you become aware of your own egoic contents by turning to them. You find them out – and you find yourself out.” In this’ insight,’ the next moment then is not a matter of correcting your failings or suppressing your tendencies, but of allowing yourself to see immediately what all that amounts to”
“You’ve got to discover the ego. You must understand the egoity or the self-contraction itself.”
“You have to discover what it is all together and let it be. Be it. Let the ‘I’ be it, but this ‘I’ you see which is the body mind and not merely the mind. It is contraction. It is something being superimposed in the present instant on existence.”
“Once you find yourself out, you can’t escape it. So that’s when the sadhana really begins, you see?”. “It’s not an end in itself; otherwise, the beginning process would be the seventh stage of life, and that’s it. It’s just a moment in a process of self-understanding.”
“Until you understand yourself fully and the contents of all the stages of life, to be the body is not to realize the seventh stage disposition. It’s to be the body; it is to be identified as the body-mind. That’s quite a different thing than the seventh stage realization. “
“If you really feel that knot, you don’t want to feel it. Hm? But it is the ground of your ordinary life. You try to distract yourself from it constantly through seeking and self-indulgence and whatnot. But if you really find out about yourself, find this knot, find what your real experience is, then you won’t want to put up with that. It will oblige you to do sadhana, to feel constantly more and more beyond it.”
“Sadhana or spiritual practice begins in that place where you make this knot, 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 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 ‘life demands’ and ‘stressful situations’. 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.”
“And when such insight appears, it is not in the form, “Oh, shucks! Will you look at that!” That kind of information comes from self-watching. When you find yourself out, that is self-watching. That is data. Those are images that you capture about yourself. All that analysis is a natural product of self-watching.
But the natural product or expression of real self-observation is radical insight. Where there is such insight, all the things that you feel bad about on the basis of your self-analysis or self-watching are undone. In a moment of real insight, there is no obstruction; there is no bad guy. The principle of the ego is not present in the moment of real self-observation, but it is always there in the moment of self-watching
Understand that everyone engages in self-watching. You are not prohibited from self-watching. However, you are not asked to self-watch. You will simply and randomly notice yourself self-watching, and you will begin to understand this strategy in yourself. You will see what it represents and why it is there. You will see what it really is. What is self-watching? It is self-meditation. What is that? It is contraction. You will really see it. You will know it to be that. And in those moments, that is insight. That is self-observation, that is understanding.”