Yes. There is a disturbance, a feeling of dissatisfaction,
some sensation that motivates a person to go to a teacher,
read a book about philosophy, believe something, or do some
conventional form of Yoga. What people ordinarily think
of as Spirituality or religion is a search to get free of
that sensation, that suffering that is motivating them.
So all the usual paths — Yogic methods, beliefs, religion,
and so on — are forms of seeking, grown out of this sensation,
this subtle suffering. Ultimately, all the usual paths are
attempting to get free of that sensation. That is the traditional
goal. Indeed, all human beings are seeking, whether or not
they are very sophisticated about it, or using very specific
methods of Yoga, philosophy, religion, and so on...
As
long as the individual is simply seeking, and has all kinds
of motivation, fascination with the search, this is not
understanding — this is dilemma itself. But where this dilemma
is understood, there is the re-cognition of a structure
in the living consciousness, a separation. And when that
separation is observed more and more directly, one begins
to see that what one is suffering is not something happening
to one but it is one's own action. It is as if you are pinching
yourself, without being aware of it. . . Then one sees that
the entire motivation of life is based on a subtle activity
in the living consciousness. That activity is avoidance,
separation, a contraction at the root, the origin, the "place",
of the living consciousness.
Avatar Adi Da Samraj
(from "Understanding", Adi Da's first public talk, on April
25, 1972)
|