Realization or Blessings?
What Does Your Life Demonstrate?
Adi Da Samraj, September 14, 2004
18:55
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Who among you is here for the purpose of Realizing Me? You have to put your hands up a little higher you’re not really getting differentiated from the rest. [inaudible] seem to be putting up both hands [laughter]. Who is NOT here to realize Me? Is that a not?
MEMBER OF GATHERING: No.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Well, that is interesting, you see. All of you say you are here to realize Me. A lot of questions can follow that, you see. How many of you mean you’re here to realize Me eventually, meaning really eventually, [Laughter] in some future incarnation, however many thousands from now it may actually take you to? For how many of you, in other words, is it a very futuristic matter, not particularly about your present lifetime endeavor? All of you are here to realize me in your present lifetime. Is that it? All of you. Nobody would say you’re not?
MEMBER OF GATHERING: [inaudible] I just don’t know how realistic it is. I’ve gone through a process on my retreat here with You, Beloved, and doubts come up. I’m getting a more realistic picture of where I’m at in my practice and I’m just in a place of some doubt as to how realistic it is I could be realized in this lifetime.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Yes. Everybody else has no doubts, then?
MEMBER OF GATHERING: Love-Ananda, at my age I wonder if I have the time [inaudible] to realize You.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Why didn’t you bring this up earlier? [laughter].
MEMBER OF GATHERING: Earlier in my life, you mean?
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Earlier in your life in My Company.
MEMBER OF GATHERING: [inaudible] [laughter].
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: I believe I did. Yes, you are under vow. Well, do you all expect Me to take you seriously about this? And actually relate to you and instruct you as people who are here to realize Me, if at all possible, in the space of your present lifetime? You all actually expect me to take you seriously about this? Anybody who doesn’t? [long pause]. You all are here to have me tell you precisely what to do for that purpose and you will do it if I say so.
GATHERING: Murmurs of yes.
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: Many of you have been in my company and under vow for a good number of years and I have told you what it requires. I have taken you seriously. I have instructed you, but you haven’t done what I told you to do. So is this some new attitude that you’re suggesting to me? Presuming that it’s true. Why haven’t you done what I have already told you? If you’re here to realize Me and to be instructed by me and do what that requires and do what I tell you to do about that, then why don’t you have a history of doing just that, instead of the history that every one of you would tell if you sat at the microphone and recounted it, which would be a history of disobedience to My Word, fundamentally. What is there that you were about in the past that you’re not about now? Are you of a different disposition than when I instructed you in the past or are you of the same disposition and are merely, for some curious reason, making this affirmation presently? Hm? the cult of silence? What?
MEMBER OF GATHERING: Beloved, I believe that I have a different disposition than I have been in this gathering in the past. I think I [inaudible] of realization [inaudible].
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: That’s not the question, is it? The question I asked, is are you purposed to realize Me?
MEMBER OF GATHERING: [inaudible].
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: … in this lifetime or in other words you are actively here to do what that requires; whether it is accomplished in the present lifetime or not is really to be seen. But are you here to do what it requires?
MEMBER OF GATHERING: [inaudible].
AVATAR ADI DA SAMRAJ: … or are you here to bargain with Me and do something else?
But I asked you about realization, being purposed to realize Me, not being inclined to be My devotee, simply that. Obviously that’s part of the process involved, but you can be moved to be My devotee and yet not be profoundly serious about realizing Me. Some may be here or be devotees of Mine basically to be Blessed somehow, Blessed in some manner or other that affects their life of non-realization, their ordinary life.
Different kinds of Blessings may be wanted and the same person may want any number of different kinds of Blessings over time, depending on the changes experienced in life. But to want My Blessing is not the same as being purposed to Realize Me. It’s not wrong to want My Blessing, but it’s not the same as being purposed to Realize Me.
Realization is a Great Matter, extraordinary, beyond extraordinary. It is the ultimate condition of existence, so it is not the same as being Blessed in the circumstance of the ordinariness of human life. Blessings are given to devotees, of course, but some are not inclined to do more than put themselves in a position to be Blessed, rather than put themselves into the position to Realize Me. It doesn’t really take an extraordinary motivation or inclination to want to be Blessed.
The need or wanting to be Blessed can come up every moment or in any moment in virtually anyone. The circumstances of life make virtually everyone wish frequently that things were different for them somehow, you see, but that’s not the same as the impulse to Realization. A few of you have spoken now and you’ve all just said something about yourselves that’s basically about wanting to be Blessed or feeling Blessed by Me. But I asked you about Realizing Me. Are you actually purposed to Realize Me such that you are even now embracing a practice of life that has the potential to Realize Me? Or are you embracing what will inevitably require you to be Blessed because it’s inevitably going to make you suffer?
When you suffer, you want Blessing. When things are going relatively well you can be of a mediocre mind and hardly even be noticing very much. The moments just pass, sometimes diverted and amused and experiencing pleasures of one kind or another, sometimes striving, working, struggling, worrying.
But to be purposed to Realization is to be one-pointed, not merely in an idea of the intention to Realize Me, but to be one-pointed with your entire being, the total body-mind such that you conform the entire body-mind to My Person and to My Instruction. You do so intensely and consistently. And this then governs your life, this purpose, this activity, this life of sadhana, governs your life, makes it profound, allows for the process of purification, and spiritual Transmission and everything to do with Hearing and Seeing and ultimately The Perfect Practice.
None of that will occur if you are simply living a life that will inevitably lead you to want to be Blessed and supported in your ordinariness. If you are purposed to Realize Me, then you must be, therefore, showing that with your life and with what you do with your life altogether.
You can’t Realize Me by wishing Realization would happen to you, you see. So when I ask you, as I just did, who here is purposed to Realize Me, it’s not merely a casual question or something to be answered by verbalizing a self image of some kind that is some kind of virtuous or relates to the question. You must examine your life and see if that’s what your life demonstrates. Does your life demonstrate the purpose to Realize Me or does your life demonstrate ordinariness and the however frequent impulse to be Blessed by Me?