Laughing
Man Institute
The
ordeal associated with the beginning level of our practice
should be appreciated. Perhaps you think that The Laughing
Man Institute is a street level, public introduction to the
Teaching, and that you do not really get down to it until
you enter The Free Communion Church. That is not the way it
is at all. The introductory level is served by our public
work, our public lectures, and the Friends’ program. The
Laughing Man Institute is a very serious, profound level of
practice. It is the foundation of everything that follows.
There is a great obligation at that level to hear, to
observe yourself, to understand, and to enter into the
self-transcending disposition in every area of the
personality. There is far more to it than taking courses,
listening to lectures, and absorbing the structures of my
Argument. You must enter into consideration, you must submit
yourself to the Argument, you must let it touch your public
self and your hidden self. If you do not, maybe you can fool
yourself and others for a while and then seem to move on to
a more advanced stage of practice, but sooner or later you
will have to go back to that school.
The essence of hearing is to observe
and understand yourself at the feeling level of the being,
the part of you that remains relatively untouched as long as
you are designed in egoic fashion. The core of egoity is
contraction at the feeling level, and that contraction
infests every aspect of the functional being. Therefore, the
core of liberation and hearing is at the feeling
level.
To make yourself that vulnerable, to
observe yourself that profoundly is a great ordeal. Human
beings are used to living according to convention, through
putting forward only portions of the self. Human beings
remain relatively untouched except in the most difficult
circumstances of their lives. Even when they are touched,
they learn very little and their responsibility level
increases very little. Remarkably, the obligation I place
upon you is to be established always in the feeling domain.
That is where Consciousness is. “Consciousness or not” —
that choice is at the heart, not in the intellectual domain.
It is at the real level of the being. Egos, people living
downtown in the ordinary world, are not used to being
emotionally vulnerable. To practice this Way you must always
be emotionally vulnerable! You see how difficult this trial
is, then.
You are not used to being submitted
in this instant with the full force of the feeling being.
You are armored against such submission. That is why the
first level of our Way, which involves listening to the
point of hearing, is so profound. It calls you to confront
my Argument and to consider it all together, with every
aspect of the personality, in the emotional
domain.
I am not trying to create another
institution alongside all other institutions just to create
order in the world and make people nice to one another. You
do not need me to do that. You do not need another Teaching
to do that. There is sufficient teaching already that can
make you into a nice, orderly, relatively harmless person
under most circumstances. That is not what I am here to
do.
Maybe all devotees should go back
again and again to The Laughing Man Institute. So what! That
is fine. Be damned glad we have a Laughing Man Institute to
go to. (Laughs.) Why should you care? It is all to serve
you. We are not sending you away. We are not separating you
from Grace. We are giving you access to Grace by associating
you with a proper discipline in every moment, until Grace
grants you the greatest possible access in every moment. You
are not being denied anything. there is no status in being
in an advanced level. If it is true of you, fine. If it is
not, go where you should be and practice the discipline you
should be practicing. You will still have access to me, to
Grace, to this Way of life, and to this community. there is
no praise, no blame, nothing lost, nothing to be resisted.
We have a structure of practice that should help every
individual to pass truly through the ordeal of transcendence
and enter into the seventh stage of practice. And to make
that transition should be everyone’s interest.
Change your level of practice every
day or week, it necessary! Of course, your level of practice
will not change so frequently, but you should be able to go
forward or backward without concern. It is all submission to
the same Reality, all based on the same Confession. Who
cares? I do not care. I do not care any more for devotees in
the Crazy Wisdom Fellowship than I do for devotees in The
Laughing Man Institute! I simply acknowledge a different
level of responsibility for each level of practice. Of
course, I am fiercely interested in having everyone practice
the ultimate discipline, but we cannot manufacture such a
circumstance overnight simply because that would be the best
way for it to be.
As Freud said, “If you don’t pay for
it, you don’t get better.” (Laughter.) Because I have heard
Freud say this in so many movies, I have gotten to the point
where I think that Freud actually said it! I say, however,
that even if you pay for it, you do not necessarily get
better. Even so, you must pay for it one way or another. You
must pay the freight, give yourself up, be moved, respond,
overcome yourself. You must go through the ordeal. And there
is not way around it, absolutely none. If it is not
important to you, if you would rather be as comfortable as
you can until death, that is your business. of course, it
has nothing whatever to to with our practice!
Through devotional recognition of Me
and through critical self-inspection (based on Listening to My Reality-Teaching), and (in due
course) through whole-bodily-recognition-responsive
devotional Awakening to My Transcendental Spiritual Divine
Self-Nature, the body-mind-complex of My devotee is,
converted and re-oriented and transformed into a moment to
moment conscious process and a
Transcendental Spirit-Conductivity process of
intrinsically ego-transcending
whole-bodily-recognition-responsive devotional Communion
with Me As I Am.
Atma Nadi Shakti Yoga (pages 384 –
395) From THE ALETHEON
At first (in the Listening
course of The Only-By-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way
of Adidam), the individual becomes tacitly aware of his or
her habits of seeking, desiring, doubting, believing,
manipulating, betraying, and always returning to the same
distress and want. In that tacit self-awareness,
it is self-evident that all of that seeking is being
motivated by a constant feeling of distress, which is the
result of self-contraction in the face of all
relations and conditions.
This discovery is most profound. It
is as if a person in pain suddenly discovers that he or she
is pinching his or her own flesh. Therefore, as soon as an
individual discovers that the painful search that occupies
his or her life is being created by a fundamental feeling of
distress, attention is free to examine that distress itself.
And, when that distress is directly examined, it is
discovered that it is the result of a chronic (and
self-induced) contraction of the total
body-mind, or the habitual avoidance of psycho-physical
relationship and psycho-physical relatedness.
Every apparent individual, thing,
circumstance, or condition arises, survives, changes, and
disappears dependently within the cosmic universe. By
definition, there is not any separate,
self-contained, independent, or
self-sufficient conditional individual, thing,
circumstance, or event. However, by reaction to all apparent
vulnerability, and by forgetting The Whole, the tendency of
every conditionally manifested individual is to contract
into separateness, or a self-defended and
self-contracted emotional, mental, psychic,
physical, and social state of isolation, presumed
independence, and dramatized want. This tendency is chronic
in every one, and it is generally not even inspected, nor is
it most fundamentally understood. Therefore, every one
seeks. And all seeking is inevitably frustrated. The
self-contracting habit is not transcended in the
search, because the search is itself the dramatization of
the self-contracting habit itself.
The Always Accessible Deep
(pages 528 – 530) From THE ALETHEON
The foundation phase of the
always directly ego-transcending Great Process of the
only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is the
devotional and Transcendental Spiritual Listening-Hearing
process of always directly transcending the lower
self. The lower self is the gross and social
ego, and the gross and social fear-sorrow-and-anger-bondage
that is always associated with the inherently egoicor
thoroughly self-contractedsearch to
absolutely fulfill, and even to utopianize, or
to perfectly and permanently satisfy, the inherently
conditional, limited, temporary, mortal, gross, and always
changing life-patterns of money, food, and
sex.
Before the foundation phase of the
ego-transcending Great Process of the only-by-Me Revealed
and Given Reality-Way of Adidam can be complete, it must
Realize a profoundly life transforming and life-reorienting
positive disillusionment, or a most fundamental
acceptance of the fact that gross conditional existence is
inherently and necessarily unsatisfactory and unperfectable.
Only on the basis of that necessary foundation-Realization
of positive disillusionment can the functional
life-energy and the attention of the entire
body-mind-complex be released from gross
ego-bondage.
The characteristic sign of
positive disillusionment relative to the
permanent and complete satisfaction of the lower
self is the foundation-Realization of the Prior
and Inherent Universal Unity of gross conditional
existencesuch that the inherently loveless
self-contraction-effort of the gross separate
self is consistently released into
participatory and integrative attitudes of human, social,
and cosmic unification with all-and-All, and into love-based
actions that transcend the otherwise separative tendencies
of the ego-I. Thus, by Means of devotionally
Me-recognizing and devotionally to-Me-responding
relinquishment of psycho-physical
self-contraction, My true devotee is inherently
released toward and into the true Transcendental Spiritual
Realization of Reality Itself and Truth Itself.
The foundation-Realization of
positive disillusionment requires fundamental
release from the confines of the grossly
objectified subject-object point of
view. And that foundation-Realization of
positive disillusionment requires the total
transformative re-orienting of the entire body-mind.
Therefore, the foundation phase of the always directly
ego-transcending practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and
Given Reality-Way of Adidam necessarily requires much
seriousness, and much profundityin order to establish
the necessary foundation of the true Hearing of
Me.
Adapted from THE
ALETHEON:
God-Talk,
Real-God-Realization, Most Perfect Divine Self-Awakening,
and The Seven Possible Stages of Life (pages 202 –
210)
My devotee must, by Means of My
Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental
Spiritual Grace, learn true
self-restraintor appropriate restraint
and Love-Bliss-conductivity of the
body-mind-self.
My devotee must, by Means of My
Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental
Spiritual Grace, learn ego-transcending surrender to
My Self-Evidently Divine Love-Bliss.
My devotee must, by Means of My
Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental
Spiritual Grace, learn the total psycho-physical
surrender that transcends the
self-contraction, and that transcends avoidance,
reaction, and bondage relative to every kind of
experiential pain and suffering, and that
transcends anxious seeking and self-indulgence,
and that also transcends avoidance relative to every kind of
experiential pleasure.
My devotee must first have Heard
Me by Listening to Me, or I will not be Seen. Therefore,
My every devotee must first be My Listening
devotee, who grows to Hear Me and See Me In and by
Means of the intrinsically, tacitly, and always immediately
ego-surrendering, ego-forgetting, and ego-transcending
radical process of devotional Communion with Me.
Instead of merely avoiding arising
conditions, objects, thoughts, and impulses, and
instead of merely indulging in arising conditions,
objects, thoughts, and impulses, My truly
ego-transcending devotee simply Beholds Me, andonly
Thus, and Therebytacitly observes, understands, and
directly transcends conditions, objects,
thoughts, impulses, and ego-I itself.
Eventually, by Means of My
Avatarically Self-Transmitted Divine Transcendental
Spiritual Grace, My devotee Stands As the
Witness-ConsciousnessMost Ultimately, Perfectly
Realizing the egoless Transcendental Spiritual
Space Wherein point of view and all
conditions, objects, thoughts, impulses, pains,
sufferings, and pleasures arise and pass away.
From THE ALETHEON: Alpha / Omega
(pages 301 – 309)
Thus, even though the practice of
reading, systematically studying, thinking about, and
talking about My Divinely Avatar-ically 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, the fundamental right and true practice of
Listening to Me is engaged as a tacitly (silently and
non-verbally, and even pre-verbally) heart-intelligent whole
bodily devotional receptivity-practice, wherein My Divinely
Avatarically Self-Revealing (and Intrinsically
Reality-Revealing) Leelas and My Divinely Avatarically
Self-Revealed (and Intrinsically Reality-Revealing) Word are
neither addressed to nor received by nor mediated by the
mind (or even by the total psycho-physical ego-“I”, or
“self”-contraction altogether), 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 (Prior to all thought or
bodily action) 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”.
Therefore, the
constantly-Sighting-Me-and-Listening-to-Me culture of the
only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is an
intensively ego-forgetting, ego-surrendering, and
ego-transcending culture of tacit, heart-intelligent, whole
bodily devotional attendance to Me and receptivity to
Me-wherein the fundamental practices are those of the
devotional formal Sighting of My Divinely-Avatarically-Born
bodily (human) Divine Form and the devotional Listening to
the formal Telling of My Divinely Avatarically
Self-Revealing and Reality-Revealing Leelas and the formal
Recitation of My Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealing and
Reality-Revealing Word.
The Unique and Priorly egoless
Reality-Way of Sighting Me and Listening To Me (pages 721
– 725)
Basis Practices
“The Reality-Way is not a
seeking-“method” for “causing” the transformation, the
fulfillment, or even the transcending of the psycho-physical
ego-“I”.”
The Reality-Way of Sighting Me Is
the devotional practice of whole bodily recognition-response
to the Intrinsically and Perfectly Me-Revealing Sight of My
Divinely-Avatarically-Born bodily Divine Form – such that,
by That recognition-responsive Me-Sighting alone, whole
bodily turning and surrendering to My Divinely Avatarically
Self-Revealed egoless Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and
Self-State is spontaneously, inevitably, and constantly
demonstrated.
It is Given and there is a Participatory
response
1. There is Sighting – Who is being
sighted and who is doing the sighting?
2. There is Recognition – Who is
being recognized and who is recognizing?
3. There is Transmission – Who is
transmitting and who is receiving the
transmission?
4. There is Surrendering – Who is
surrendering and to what is that surrendering to?
5. It is Me-Only Demonstrated – It
is Only-Me Self Revealed. The ego can not ‘do’ sighting and
can not ‘do’ surrendering. There is Only-Grace.
The fundamental practices of
Listening to Me follows upon and entirely develops from the
right and true devotional practice of Sighting
Me.
1. Receptivity to the vocalized and
audible Telling of the Leelas (or Revelation-Histories) of
My Divine Avataric Lifetime
2. Recitation of My Divinely
Avatarically Self-Revealing Reality-Word.
3. In due course, the Reality-Way of
Sighting Me and Listening to Me becomes moment to moment
ego-forgetting, ego-surrendering, ego-transcending, and
truly searchless Me-Beholding.
4. The Reality-Way of Sighting Me
and Listening to Me is not a seeking-“method” for “causing”
the transformation, the fulfillment, or even the
transcending of the psycho-physical ego-“I”.
5. My Spoken word to the “ear” of
heart, in such a manner that the heart-intelligent total
body is openly and freely receptive to My Leelas and My Word
at the “root”-depth, Prior to the egoic “self”-contraction
of the psycho-physical faculties.
6. Right and true Sighting of Me and
Listening to Me is a searchless and constant devotional
orientation of the heart-intelligent total body, and not
merely an exercise of the body-mind-complex on the basis of
the already “self”-contracted orientation of ego-“I”, its
“problems”, or its will to seeking.
7. Prior to verbal thinking, prior
to objectifying. It is a process of silent heart-Listening,
silent and pre-verbal Self-Communicated and Self-Revealed
Reality-Word, Which Is the Transcendental Spiritual Essence
of all heard speech.
8. Thus, even though 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, the fundamental right and true practice of
Listening to Me is engaged as a tacitly (silently and
non-verbally, and even pre-verbally) heart-intelligent whole
bodily devotional receptivity-practice.
9. True Self-Nature Self Revealed –
Not mediated by the mind, but rather, tacitly received At,
and In, and directly, by the inherently thought-free nervous
system and brain as a whole. 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”.
I can see what egos do.
When egos attempt to live as My
devotees, they automatically protect themselves behind
formalism.
That formalism manifests as
“programs” of word-and-symbol activity.
The word-and-symbol culture does
have its use for beginners-or My not-yet-“Perfect-Practice”
devotees.
My beginning (or
not-yet-“Perfect-Practice”) devotees should be constantly
Sighting My bodily (human) Divine Avataric Revelation-Form,
Listening to the Telling of the Leelas (or
Revelation-Histories) of My Divine Avataric Lifetime,
Listening to the Recitation of My Teaching-Word, performing
Sacramental Acts of devotional regard of Me, engaging in
devotional and always Me-Invoking chanting, practicing all
the forms of right-life obedience to Me, becoming more and
more profoundly conformed to My “Perfect Knowledge”
Instruction, and (altogether) turning all the
psycho-physical faculties (and, thus and thereby,
surrendering whole bodily) to Me.
All of that (which My “Perfect
Practice” devotees also, intensively and Perfectly, continue
to engage) is an intrinsically ego-transcending practice and
process that purifies and transforms, but only if it is
based upon true (and truly devotional) recognition-response
to Me-which, as I have Said, is Realization, is
Enlightenment.
Devotional recognition-response to
Me is the necessary context for Real participation in My
Divine Avataric State-Which Is Intrinsically egoless Reality
Itself.
Adidam Is No-Seeking Practice Is
Perpetual Reality-Practice (pages 779 – 791)