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TURNING TO ME AWAKENS A UNIVERSAL
COMPASSION
DEVOTEE: How is it possible
to still feel compassion-feel any sorrow, or my own
mortality -i f I give my attention to You, and just remember
You, and forget about everything else?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I have
not forgotten about anything.
Turning to Me is the practice. This
is the other side of the question I was recently asked about
working at a computer. For the devotee who asked that
question, the computer had his attention. He wanted to know
how he could possibly turn to Me in the midst of working on
a computer. And you are saying just the opposite. You want
to know how you can give attention to anything else in the
midst of turning to Me.
The process of turning to Me is not
one of two practices – one in which you turn to Me, and the
other in which you forget everything else (as if there is a
separate “technique” of forgetting that goes along with the
turning to Me). You are presuming that the practice is to
turn to Me, and also to deliberately forget everything else.
No, if you turn to Me, there is no “deliberately forget
everything else”. When you are turned to Me, the contents of
“experience” do not bind you. Turning to Me does not make
you dysfunctional. There is nothing about turning to Me that
undermines compassionate association with others. Why should
it do such a thing? Turning to Me is not a strategic means
of forgetting everything else.
The practice is to turn to Me
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 Me instead of wandering in conditions (and, in
so doing, not turning to Me). Turning to Me is to be done
moment to moment, under all conditions. If you turned to Me
and somehow simultaneously succeeded in forgetting
everything (or ignoring everything), you would never have
any “experience” whatsoever – except some kind of
whatever-it-is that you “experience” in your turning to Me.
What is transcended in the turning to Me is the
“self”-contraction. Turning to Me is not a “technique” for
dissociation. Turning to Me transforms and purifies
participation in the conditions of life – it does not
eliminate them from the view. Otherwise, how could there be
any “self”-understanding awakened in the process? What would
it have to do with life? What would it have to do with
anything? In that case, to be (so-called) “turned to Me”
would simply be another mode of
“self”-contraction.
Anyone can operate a computer and be
turned to Me at the same time. How is that so? You must
practice until you find out the secret of this. You must
practice devotion to Me until it is right, until it
demonstrates its fullness and establishes equanimity in the
midst of the functional, practical, and relational
conditions that are associated with the natural circumstance
of beginner’s practice. That natural circumstance is,
generally speaking, in the context of daily life. If you are
feeling less concerned – in the worried sense, the disturbed
sense-about what is going on in your homeland of Israel,
that is positive enough. It allows you to be aware of the
situation in Israel with more clarity, and more of what can
truly be called compassion. To not have a reactive or
disturbed view-but, rather, to demonstrate equanimity and
the capability for unobstructed feeling-association-is quite
a different thing from being mixed up and concerned and
“self”-contracted in an ego-possessed manner. That kind of
change would be a sign of right practice. The effort to
forget is not part of the practice I have Given
you.
The turning to Me brings equanimity
to the body-mind-complex. It reverses the gesture of
“self”-contraction, thereby establishing equanimity in the
disposition altogether. Therefore, turning to Me relaxes the
seeking disposition. Turning to Me is not an activity of
“self”-contraction. Turning to Me is not a dissociative
strategy. That is why, if you are rightly and truly turning
to Me, you can practice devotion to Me under all conditions.
But you must find out how to practice this turning to Me in
the midst of all conditions. And that means you must do the
practice. You must do the practice until you get all of its
secrets. You must grow in the practice.
As I Said, I have not forgotten
anything. I have not become incapable of noticing the
suffering of humankind, or the conditions of the moment. I
Respond in a manner appropriate to the moment in terms of
right discrimination and feeling-responsiveness. And, for
My, devotee, such noticing and responsiveness are enhanced
by right practice of turning to Me.
I am also Aware of what goes on in
Israel and elsewhere. There is no barrier to My being Aware
of it. I am more intensely Aware of it than you are. I have
no obstruction to being Aware of it. Your awareness of it is
limited to what information you can get, your memories, your
past associations – all of which are conditional means. My
View is Unobstructed, without any armoring or limitation at
all. Thus, rather than that awareness becoming obstructed by
the fact of Realization, My Perception of conditional
realities is, in fact, entirely free of obstructions. I have
access to what is happening all over the Earth, without
getting on the phone or watching television. I see it
now.
Relative to your question, then, it
is similar to the questions that virtually everyone asks.
Something happens in your “experience”, and, all of a
sudden, it makes you wonder what the practice is. It seems
to require a new Instruction, or a new Teaching but,
actually, it does not. It merely leads to
questions.
When you are diverted by something,
you suddenly do not know what the Teaching is. You say you
are diverted by the sense of dissociation from your homeland
attachments. Your sense that, if you are turning to Me, you
are necessarily dissociating from your homeland attachments
is precisely what moves you to ask the question whereas it
is really not anything but an error in your own practice, by
which you become uncertain about the practice itself. It is
a factor in your own “experience” that is making the
practiced seem ambiguous. You are simply distracted by
something, and that is undermining right practice.
Therefore, you must do the practice as I have Given
it.
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. You are applying a willful “method” of your own,
and not simply resting the faculties in Me.
Resting the faculties in Me does not
mean that you willfully turn the faculties away from their
contents and associations. Their contents and associations
will be brought into a condition of equanimity, by virtue of
your devotional turning to Me. Thus, purification of the
faculties will occur, “self”-understanding will awaken,
depth of Communion with Me will come as a Gift. You cannot
steal it. You cannot force it. Seeking is not the
“method”.
Practice in My Divine Avataric
Company is a lesson in surrender. Surrender transcends
willfulness. The strategies associated with seeking are
relaxed by, right practice of devotion to Me. You must
suffer through the tapas (or purifying heat) of being
brought to right practice – simply by turning to Me and
living by My Instructions-until you show the signs of
maturity that indicate another stage of
practice-demonstration is established. in your
case.
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. And it is the process of right
practice, right devotion to Me, that will move you beyond
this priest you carry in yourself, that stands between you
and That Which There Is to Realize.
Compassion must also grow in you.
Inevitably, because of your life in Israel, you are firmly
combined with its situation – but suffering is everywhere.
Suffering covers the Earth. Indeed, all beings are
suffering, all nations are suffering. A universal compassion
awakens, in which ego is transcended, and an equanimity
arises. There is compassionate regard for all the persons
and places with which one is (in some fundamental manner)
“karmically” combined. Your attachments and history are in
Israel – and that is, in some sense, a kind of
provincialism, in that it defines what your attention will
go to with regard to feeling sympathy, and compassion, which
is understandable enough. But, on the other hand, suffering
is everywhere. So, everywhere you look, you are seeing the
diaspora, of humankind. How could you miss it? It is before
your eyes. It is in the person next to you. It is wherever
you are.
If your presumed turning to Me
excludes your capability for sympathetic (or compassionate)
association with whatever persons and conditions are
arising, then it is not true practice. Instead, it is a kind
of blindness and rigidity, another kind of ego-possession –
kind of hiding. Thus, in the midst of trying to practice
seriously, you run into an obstacle that is a characteristic
of your own egoic patterning. That is what it is. Therefore,
you must persist in the practice – until the secret of right
practice reveals itself in an equanimity and a rightness
relative to your associations.
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