Emotion and the Ordeal of Self-Understanding – Adi Da Samraj

The Realization ofLove Changes All Emotional and Egoic Complexes

The Ordeal ofSelf-Understanding

Adi Da SamrajJune 5,1992

The following exercise by Beezone was taken from a video talk by Adi Da Samraj, edited and adatped.

You must commit yourself bodily, beyond your fear and reluctance in dealing with your emotional life. This occurs at the base of the body, at the base chakra. Strong feelings are rooted there, feelings you are not in touch with, unconscious. When you get in touch with these base feelings, sorrow, fear and anger will arise. And when these feelings arise you will want to stop the process of getting in touch withthem.

The principle mood at the root of your emotional life is fear. Fear arises in and as separation or individuation. Separation from what? From the Source! In the infant the source is the mother, in the adult it’s the Divine Reality. This Source is prior to mind and prior to thought. In the child the mind isn’t fully developed yet. But in the adult, with your developed mind you must get in touch with this primary emotional matter and allow what was previously unconscious to become conscious. When consciousness is ‘applied’ to what was previously unobservedthe possibility of growth in the emotional realm of your life can become observed and hopefully understood and transcended. If not, these unconscious feelings, down at theroot, will control your life.

“If you are evergoing to establish a firm intimacy with anyone, you must deal with all these emotions and become emotionally clarified.”

In this basic fear your manifest personality may develop as a very controlling person or one who needs to be controlled by others. Security may be a dominant and aggressive trait of your personality and therefore your psychology. You may need to dominate others, control others or be controlled by others to avoid feeling this underlining fear. You may develop as a very passive individual basically asleep needing always to consol yourself with food and experiences in the vital arena. You may develop as a couch potato or a bungie jumper all in reaction to your basic underlining fear. Becoming numb or an adrenaline junkie are two extremes in this type of personality development. Another unconscious strategy in dealing (or avoiding) this basic underlying emotion is more of a mental approach one that shows itself as a strong intellectual or mental type of person, book worm, a scientist a scholar. A type of person who basically cuts off this root feeling by existing only in the mind.

Beezone

Below is a chart designed from the teachings of Adi Da. Adi Da observed and described three distinct character types, or ways in which individuals tend to dramatize egoity in the first three stages of life. He calls these three strategies “solid”, “peculiar”, and “vital”.

The chart below outlines theattitudes of each of these three strategies.

	SOLID	PECULIAR	VITAL
PRINCIPLE MOTIVATINGMOOD	Fear	Sorrow	Anger
STAGE OF LIFE	First Stage	Second Stage	Third Stage
ASSOCIATED WITH	Vital shock ofbirth	loss of self-security andloss of power over others on whom onedepends	struggle with motives ofindependence and dependence and aggressive efforttoward genital victory
CHARACTER	obsessivelyself-controlling and other-controlling	alternately idealistically(and thus mentally) self-controlled and chaoticallyself-indulgent	characteristically vitally(or physically) self-indulgent
FOUNDATION MOOD	fear of being controlled byothers (or conditions outside thebody-mind-self)	yearning to be effectivelytouched or loved and a call and hysterical need (orsearch) to be controlled, or restored to balance bya positive controlling influence	chronic effort to resist,refuse, or avoid the controlling influence ofothers (or even the mind) on the bodily existenceof the conditional self
REACTION TO FEELING ORACTUAL EXPERIENCE OF BEING	too much controlled byothers, especially adults	neglected, denied love, anddenied a positive controlling influence	too much controlled byothers, especially adults
“STYLE” OFREACTION	passive and ratherinfantile	hysterical and ratherchildish	aggressive and ratheradolescent
STRATEGY	mental (or mentally”solid”, or strategically, and, principally, bymeans that exploit the conceptual mind,invulnerable)	emotional (or emotionally”peculiar”, and, perhaps, or sometimes, evenhysterical)	vital (or “vitally”, and,perhaps, or sometimes, even “grossly”,physical)
DOMINATECHARACTER-ISTIC	hyperactivity of theconceptual mind	excessively “romantic” (oreven sentimental) and idealistic (or unrealistic)expectations (that are inevitably frustrated) andthe loss of balance	obsessive and compulsivevital-physical self-expression

see more on these three primary characteristics of the Solid, Vital and Peculiar personalities strategies.

Further reading andstudy:

Vitals,Peculiars, and Solids and the Primal Qualities of Universaland Bodily Life

TheFrontal Line – The descending current

Discriminative Intelligence and The Seven Stages of Life – Laughing Man Magazine

Observe Your Pattern

Adi Da Samraj, January 30, 1996

Beezone Snip-its

*What’s interesting and useful about noticing a pattern early in your life is to see that the pattern is right now.

*It’s not that you have to struggle with something that happened early in your life -if you see it there then you can see something about the pattern which you are enacting right now. And that’s what you can change.

*The more fully you are aware of the pattern in which you are apparently in motion, certainly the more intelligent, perhaps the more effective your transcendence of it in every moment.

*It’s the being set straightthat’s the important part.

*Then functioning in that straightness, directly, moment to moment, rather than with a lot of verbal instructions which you have to organize and rehearse every other moment.

*The sadhana must become straightforward.

*It’s not about building up a massive structure of mental calculations.

*It’s a matter of freeing up the intelligence from confusion and bondage and uninspected entanglement.

Adidam Editors

1. The three human types (vital, peculiar, and solid) are a strategic play on life, or the Life-Principle, conceived as dilemma or conflict. That is, the natural play of the etheric (or Life-Force dimension) and the elemental (gross physical dimension) has become a strategic or obstructed dramatization. In each person or, strategy, the conflict is between the two conditions of Life-Force and body.

The vital person or strategy dramatizes the conflict by irresponsibly exploiting the bodily possibilities.

The peculiar person or strategy dramatizes the conflict by irresponsibly exploiting the emotional possibilities, and the Solid person or strategy does the same by irresponsibly exploiting the mental possibilities. All three strategies appear at one oranother moment in every individual, even though any one strategy may be especially characteristic of him.

The key to all these dramatizationsis irresponsibility.

That is, the conflict between Life-Force and body has not been inspected to the point of consciousness, humor, and responsible control of the dramatization. Only the mature individual enjoys such control. Only such a one has become purified of the vital, peculiar, and solid games of life and has begun, through love, stably to feed upon the Transcendental Divine Life, or the Real and Infinite Condition of our existence. And only such a one, therefore, may enter into the fourth or truly psychic and spiritualizing stage of life. First there must be mastery of the negative dramatization of embodied Life-Force.

Before we can grow into the higher functions of the body mind, we must become responsible and balanced in those functions in which we already appear. By presenting ways of recognizing and compensating for our irresponsible vital, peculiar, and solid habits, Adi Da has created a whole body psychology that radically challenges all conventional psychological systems and therapies. The conventional approaches only indulge the individual’s problematic self-imagery through endless subjective analysis and mental or conceptual insights. But such approaches never do affect the vital-physical and emotional roots of our disease and lovelessness. In contrast, the approach presented in this chapter – and throughout this book – requires us to heal and harmonize the body-mind through a practical change of action. Adi Da Samraj asserts that “subjectivity follows action”: When the body and energy are used in a new and lawful way, based upon whole body insight, or inspection via true feeling, the oldinterior patterns of self-possession and disharmony gradually become obsolete.

One of the most important forms of new action, in compensating for our strategic imbalances and forms of self-possessed suffering, is a new, disciplined,and wholly intelligent approach to diet. This is a radical and also homely suggestion in the midst of today’s conceptually sophisticated systems of mental health. In The Free Communion Church, we have found that the single most dramatically effective therapeutic measure for all apparently mental, nervous, and psychological disorders orchronic difficulties is a change of diet based upon the observations and recommendations offered in this chapter. In fact, by applying these dietary regimens within a total lifeof practical, devotional, and moral disciplines, men and women with significant social and psychological liabilities have adapted to a balanced and productive life in the culture of The Free Communion Church. Along with others whose imbalances were more “normal” (or less exaggerated) but who have experienced equally profound healing and harmonization, such men and women have gone on to evolve in experience and mature in true spiritual practice.