He Awakens Me To Love

Nancy C.

The author is a resident of San Francisco, California.

I’m not sure how to feel right now other than grateful for all the love and insight I have received from Samraj Adi Da. My experience with Him has been a blessing, and the great gifts that have emerged as a result of my involvement with Him will never die. I think of His children now, and send them my love. Thanks to all of you who served Him personally. I have not chosen to live that way of life, but His message will always be alive in me, shining with recognition.

I still wonder what my relationship to Adi Da was all about, and I seem to have developed an inability to embrace religion, but I still love Adi Da Samraj. I cannot comprehend what that is all about, and I will not attach any meaning to it. I’ll leave that to others who are more involved with the yoga of the mind, but no matter who He was, is, or will be, does not change the fact that the love I feel remains. One cannot help who they love. I’ve just learned to bring intelligence to it, and act with as much integrity as I can.

No one can comprehend what this being represents. He is beyond the ordinary constructs of our minds. Whatever you say about “Him” can be asserted or denied. That the beauty and frustration of his teaching. You either understand, or you don’t. No praise, no blame. "God" not only exists in all of us, but prior to us, and in the midst of all things, and beings. "God" is a term to describe what is unknown, and what is unknown is beautiful, and terrifying all at once. The only constant is embracing the present moment. Samraj Adi Da is a doorway to reality. He brought back the sacred. On His sanctuaries it is felt. There is need for this in the world. I don’t believe in false gods anymore.

To me, Samraj Adi Da is no longer an external authority. I made Him that at first, in order to fufill a childish need to find approval from a father figure. And while I have not been exclusively served by Him spiritually, His teaching affected me in a most fundamental way. I realize that I often choose to live as a self-involved, separate personality, but He showed me there was another way. Even though I am no longer a formal student, the argument of His teaching has stayed with me, and I have remained suspicious of my self-involved motives at every turn. It has made me more tolerant of other ways of life, and more open to change. I can’t say I didn’t go through a dark night of the soul after I left the community, but it was necessary, that I suffer my attachment to my ordinary perceptions till I was willing to change.

He criticized me for being an idealistic romantic, and wanting to make my own religion rather than turn to Him. In fact, I seemed incapable to submit to that relationship in a mature fashion, and I came to wonder if the whole construct of the Guru-devotee relationship was even possible for me. I entered into it very naively (and also with a lot of baggage).

But every time I saw Him, I was so immersed in love. Even when I view a picture of Him I come to rest in truth. He awakens me to love.

I have experienced awakenings with viewing other murtis, viewing a tiger, and even just being present with anyone brings me into that experience again . . . but with Him it always goes deeper.

I cannot believe in anything anymore. I can’t be anything anymore, but I can simply admit, that whoever Samraj is, I love Him, to the best of my understanding.

The grief I feel is hard to describe. Mostly I feel grateful for my time with Him. Make no mistake, I could never be a student in the way I was before. I’ve made a lot of choices that have helped me grow out of that childishness. But being His devotee is an integral part of who I am . . . and in spite of all my “criticisms” and concerns about Him and my involvement with the community, I deeply love Him. Perhaps I will never understand what He represents, but there has been no one in my life that has conveyed such beauty to me. I’m not trying to convince anyone of anything anymore. And though I know in my heart there really is no death, I grieve that I will never again see the bliss animated through His physical form which leaves me to only transcend the final throes of my attachment to Him.

I’ve called Him a madman, I’ve called Him a saint, I’ve called Him a hedonist, and a trickster. I’ve called myself a sheep for following Him, but now I yearn for Him, and can only find Him, in everything and everyone. I see Him now as I write, mad with Love, and longing to be connected to something beyond my ordinary limitation. Anything short of that is unbearable.

The gift He gave me was like no other gift I have received in my life. . . . I found in Samraj Adi Da a doorway from maya, even though it nearly killed me to see what was necessary. I saw that I was not a victim. That every situation that presents itself is a gift to break through the limits of bondage. He offended me in every possible way. I felt that I would never be His chosen one. I would never be His beloved, His consort. It took His death for me to see that I was eternally bound to HIM: not Him as Franklin Jones, Bubba Free Jones, my husband, my father, or some power hungry despot, but as the gift He gave me, when I first saw Him and understood. I remember one Darshan I received in Fiji, where I witnessed His form take on all the faces of who I loved, and then finally become the visage of death. I remember weeping with gratitude because I felt I had really seen reality in all its beauty and terror and I sat there swooning in love, gratitude for the unreasonable Happiness I felt in the midst of my dissolution.

I left Adi Da Samraj because the revelation of Narcissus was unbearable to me. Yes, there were “others” that hurt me, that abandoned me, but it’s what I did in the face of that that created the real suffering. You can say anything you want about this incredible being, Adi Da Samraj, but in my reality, He was the only one who showed me true love, who was willing to insult me to the ultimate degree to help me to see my real condition. Every day I pray that I live the gift of revelation He gave me. I pray that I live as an open heart surrendered to truth, and aligned to the beauty He demonstrated to me. In my life, He was the only one that loved me freely and fiercely. Not "me" as a separative ego, but me as an aspect of the Divine shining to infinity and throughout each and every body-mind.

RETURN TO:
ADI DA'S DIVINE MAHASAMADHI
AND ADIDAM IN PERPETUITY