Chapter 8 Meditation and Satsang
“Soldier on the March”
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Periodically, every individual passes through a time of crisis, of great resistance and fear. Ultimately, every one of My devotees must go through the same fundamental process of self-understanding and ego-transcendence that I Demonstrated during My “Sadhana Years”. Not precisely in the same apparent form but, within the pattern of the individual’s own conditions, that same fundamental process must occur.
Real Spiritual life absolutely requires the undermining and frustration of the capability for ego-binding distraction. That is why Spiritual life has often been described in harrowing terms. That is why My devotees must be responsible for constantly cultivating the devotional (and, in due course, Spiritual) relationship to Me, for rightly disciplining the basic life-functions, and for observing, understanding, and (more and more) transcending the dramatization of egoity they are always tending to enact.
Spiritual life is a crisis. Therefore, Spiritual life involves discomfort at times. Such discomfort does not mean that Spiritual life is failing, or that you are not good enough for it. Crisis and discomfort must occur. The crisis (or turnabout) is what Spiritual life is all about. It is supposed to occur.
You are supposed to suffer purifying events.
You are supposed to encounter resistance in yourself.
You are supposed to discover all kinds of garbage in yourself.
So why should there be any special resistance to it when it occurs? There may be discomfort, and you may wish you did not have to go through it. But, apart from that, there is no reason why you should be over-whelmed or completely disenchanted by the fact that you are experiencing a period of intense conflict, crisis, suffering, and disturbance.
The more time you waste identifying with all of that, the less sensitive you become to the event itself. Therefore, Satsang with Me, devotion to Me, and a loving and intelligent approach to all of life should be intensified in the periods of apparent discomfort.
These apparently disturbing episodes of crisis in the Real process of Spiritual life are very intelligent, very meaningful. They have a great deal to show you. The more capable you are of passing through these times, the more useful they become.
The individual who is really using this process can be enduring this crisis almost continually, with great frequency and intensity and, yet, like a soldier on the march, the person never misses a step, never becomes outwardly reactive. Such a person continues to function, and apparently only enjoys life. He or she does not get involved in an entire drama of upset.
In the beginning, however, when someone is just beginning to pass through this kind of crisis in consciousness, there tend to be reactions and breakdowns whenever the crisis begins. There is very often an emotional collapse, even a physical collapse. There are episodes that have an almost psychotic quality to them. It is during those times that the person is wondering whether or not to continue to do the sadhana, and all of that. But, as you pass through more of these purifying episodes, you begin to realize how you must function in terms of the Real Spiritual process.
Once you have begun to mature in the process, then, when such an event of crisis arises, there is something already familiar about it. You know the signs, you know what is about to occur, you know the kinds of reactions that will tend to build up. You know that, instead of clenching your teeth and resisting the crisis, you should find some more work to do during that time.
Instead of planning a vacation or a binge when you see a crisis coming, you cancel all forms of entertainment or ordinary distraction, everything that you would normally use to distract yourself from your usual state. You plan a great deal of work for the coming days. You plan an ordinary, functional life.
When you have matured to that degree, you make good use, really good use, of these episodes. The more intelligent you are, the better the use you make of them. The less intelligent you are, and the more capable you are of binding distraction at such times, the more you will look for means to dramatize your state, to distract yourself from the lesson that turns purification into transformation.
You must know that everything I am doing is a means to bring about this crisis. I desire this crisis in you.
I do not want it not to happen.
I do not want to console you.
I do not want you to be contented in your unconsciousness.
I want you to become sensitive to your actual state.
I want you to know very well what you are always up to.
I want you to become capable of observing yourself under all kinds of conditions.
I want you to notice the machine of your ordinary activity.
And I want that entire ego-machine to collapse. I want it to come to an end. I want the “death” of all of that.
If that “death” does not occur, there will be no release, no Realization. There will just be the self-generation of the unconscious event of life and death, the continual round that is already distracting you.
I am here to Reveal and to Give the various means necessary to serve this crisis because to serve this crisis is to serve most fundamental self-understanding in My devotee, and (ultimately) to serve the True and Absolute Joy That characterizes the Realization of most perfect “radical” self-understanding. Therefore, every instant in Satsang with Me is working to bring about this crisis.