Finding Adi Da > Daniela Morena

"This Is Home!"

Daniela Morena

Daniela Morena has been a devotee of Adi Da since 1986. She has worn many hats and has done a 360 change twice in her career, living on three different continents. She currently heads Italian Sorrisi and teaches Italian language. She also facilitates using "The Coaching Game", a coaching tool for life and work solutions. Daniela lives in Singapore, but where her Home is. . . you're about to find out.

In 1981, I was fresh out of Interpreters' School, living near Florence, in Italy, with my family. I was into all the things my generation pursued: peace, music, free love, and drugs. But I was not happy, although I did not realise it at the time.

My father had found me a job in the marketing office of a hotel chain, and I started work on 5th May.

My boss kept a lot of his books in a room at the back of this office, and they attracted my attention because they all seemed to be from the same author — albeit one who changed his name from Franklin Jones to Bubba Free John to Da Free John! I was intrigued. I tried to read some, but the books seemed to make no sense at all to me. I found that very puzzling: I was, after all, a qualified translator!

The pictures in the books though. . . those cast a spell on me. Literally. Every time I was alone in the office, I would dash to the back room to leaf through the books, from picture to picture, over and over. The man in the pictures seemed to me to be very captivating. I could not say why, but I really wanted to look at him a lot!

I finally found the courage to ask my boss about the books, and he told me they were of his Spiritual Master, Adi Da Samraj. He offered to lend me some, and ask him any questions I had about them. Many very lively arguments ensued, with me feeling totally offended by what I perceived to be a person placing himself in a superior position to everyone else. But still, those photos. . . I kept going back to them.

One day, as I unashamedly snooped inside my boss's cupboard, I came across a large framed photo. Adi Da Samraj was seated inside a car, and was smiling with an open expression, looking directly at the camera. It felt like He was looking at me!

Suddenly, the room around me dissolved in a bright cloud. There was light everywhere, only light. The boundary of my skin, separating my body from the surrounding environment, was no longer there. I was still "me", but I no longer felt like a separate person. There was only a continuum, an infinite field of light. And the picture and the Spiritual Master were right there with me, in that ocean of light. I gave out a huge sigh, and burst into tears. My heart skipped a beat from the emotion, as my brain formulated these words: "Finally! Finally what I have been longing for! This is Home!" I felt elated, although I had not been aware of seeking such a place, such a feeling, before. It felt perfect, and natural.

I was so very, very happy.

I do not know how long it lasted, but this Revelation revolutionised my entire life, because now I felt with profound certainty that I needed to — I wanted to — meet Adi Da Samraj in person. He had touched something deep in my heart that I did not know was there, a need so profound and so much deeper than anything else I might have sought, before and since. And I felt that I needed to change my life accordingly, because He had the key, the answer.

And He did. And He still does! And that is why I have been His devotee since 1986.

For more stories from Daniela Morena, read He Is the Heart, Infinite and Blissful, Adi Da "Heard" My Thoughts, and The Divine Force That Brings an End To "me".

This story appears in the section, Finding Adi Da