5.
Voluntary Participation
in Crazy Wisdom
This
is Part 5 of Chris Tong's eight part article, An Overview
of Adi Da's Crazy Wisdom and "The Way That I Teach".
If you are recognizing Me in the
sense of tacitly feeling and identifying My State, that is yours to acknowledge.
On that basis, you become My devotee. And having become My devotee, you volunteer
for this response — this recognition produces a response. You volunteer
for it. You live by My Instruction. You enter more profoundly into this
turning to Me, which becomes surrender to Me, which is merely Beholding Me and
being able to "Locate" My specific Transmission of My Transcendental Spiritual
Nature and Presence, Which Ultimately Reveals My Very State — Which Is the State,
the Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State. That is the nature of
the seventh stage Realization of Me. Adi Da Samraj, October
20, 2004 |
The entire Way of Adidam is, without
exception, completely voluntary. This doesn't mean that I casually do whatever
I please from day to day: "No, I just don't feel like doing that part of the practice
today." Or, if I am in Adi Da's company: "I don't feel like doing what He just
asked me to do." Although that superficial approach to practice and the relationship
to Adi Da does indeed happen, and no one is forced to do anything, that kind of
casualness is not what I mean by "voluntary"! Rather, if it really is something
that I cannot bring myself to do, even after very serious consideration
—
and never losing touch with the profound respect for my Spiritual Master (which
was the basis for my becoming a devotee)
— then it would be right
to say "No". Indeed, more often than not, such a situation is one where I
agree
with what Adi Da is asking me to do — I clearly see the virtue behind
what He is asking me to do — but I still don't feel I can do it . . . like the resistance that occurs
when an alcoholic is asked to stop drinking or a chronically shy person is asked to participate.
Longtime devotee, Crane Kirkbride, has this to say about the matter of voluntary
participation:
Crane:
I've had personal examples of when I received “strong encouragement” to participate
in a particular consideration relative to some aspect of practice
and said, “no.” And it was let go — no forcing. Strong
invitation, because Adi Da clearly saw something about me that could have been
served by my being seen or revealed or exposed or released through participation.
But even so, there was no forcing. In all the years I've been around Adi Da —
thirty-two, or however long it is now — I've never seen anybody forced
into a position that he or she clearly said “no” about. . . . I remember one
occasion (among many) when a devotee simply said, “I don’t need it
and I’m not interested.” And so he didn’t participate. And there was no problem
about it. Sometimes Adi Da or the friends of a particular devotee will feel
that that person will really benefit from being in a particular practice consideration,
and will be mature enough to handle it. Then that person may say he or she doesn't
want to participate. In that case, that person could receive degrees of encouragement
to change his or her mind. But in the end it remains his or her free decision. |
Sometimes
people ask how the Way of Adidam could be voluntary if one begins it by taking
an "Eternal Vow" — a vow committing the devotee to being Adi Da's
devotee forever and to always engage the practice He has given. But this is somewhat
like asking about the vow one takes when one gets married ("till death do us part"),
or when one becomes a priest or monk (which typically involves vows of lifelong
chastity, poverty, and obedience). The vow and the commitment are completely voluntary.
We choose to get married, and we choose whom we are going to marry. Just so, we
choose our Spiritual Master, and we choose to make a profound commitment to practice,
and we formalize that voluntary but profound commitment via the traditional form
of vow-taking.
Adi Da will remind us of our vow-taking from time to time.
But such a reminder is not some kind of coercion. It simply serves to remind us
of the fact that we ourselves volunteered for this Way, based on our understanding
of its great purpose and its ordeal. We can sometimes forget that great commitment
as the years pass, even as married couples can sometimes lapse into infidelity,
when they lose touch with the reason they got married in the first place. As Adi
Da sometimes humorously put it, "Isn't this what you hired Me for?" And indeed,
every year we make a ceremony of renewing our Eternal Vow (much as married couples
will sometimes renew their marriage vows) — to remind ourselves that it
is not a legal contract, but a voluntary, living, conscious, and happy commitment.
Even the woman who brought a lawsuit against
Adi Da and Adidam in 1985, for complaints that included "coercion" and "involuntary
servitude", would later retract every complaint,
saying that she had been misled by a manipulative lawyer, and stating in a formal
letter, "I can't think of anything the Master ever forced me to do."
(As
it also turns out, a Marin County judge ruled that she had no legal basis for
filing the lawsuit anyway, which this woman's later letter only confirmed.)
You should. . . understand that I am not here to fight with you for any cause whatsoever. Whatever you choose, you are completely free to choose, and that is all there is to that. All I represent here is an offering. I know how difficult it is to accept it and to live it. . .
My relationship to individuals is of a spiritual kind. It works on the level of the super-physics of things. It is not (exclusively) a worldly matter. It is not founded in this or any other world. It is not conventional, it is not something within your experience altogether. . . The true spiritual process is not just mental stuff. It is cellular, molecular, and requires great human character to perform. And if you will live it, then a spiritual relationship with me, personally, directly, in the transcendental form in which it exists, becomes possible. Until then, you should just consider the Teaching if you are interested in it."
Avatar Adi Da Samraj |
All
great creative challenges that involve self-transcendence — whether
one is training to be an Olympic athlete, or is working toward a graduate degree
— require one to face choices between present-time "comfort" and
longterm growth. So too in the Way of Adidam, as longtime devotee, Brian O'Mahony,
makes clear:
It
is important to understand that all participation with Adi Da and His Way is voluntary
and it is up to each individual as to how intensely they participate or practice,
and how quickly they grow in the process. . . . Of course, Adi Da is always
calling and urging us to deeper and more profound embrace of the Way. Why wouldn't
He? Our Liberation is His only Purpose. So, I constantly feel the demand to deepen
my practice, to grow more, to contemplate my Master and His Work more seriously
and constantly. I am very grateful for this demand and for Adi Da's Call to move
beyond my otherwise mortal destiny. . . . Adi Da accounts for everyone
in His Work, and invites everyone's participation. That is why He has offered
different levels of involvement depending on one's impulse. And yet the Way is
instant also. I felt instantly Liberated when I first read His Word, and that
feeling has never left me. I have always felt that He Enlightened me in that very
first moment, and my life is just the purification and release of all obstructions
that remain to my perfect enjoyment of His Gift and His Divine Company. Brian
O'Mahony
You should also understand that
I am not here to fight with you for any cause whatsoever. Whatever you choose,
you are completely free to choose, and that is all there is to that. All I
represent here is an offering. I know how difficult it is to accept it and to
live it. And I know exactly what I am doing and what I have to do in the case
of every person. I have known exactly what to do with people who come in the condition
that you all do, without the purification or clarity that a mature individual
would represent in a spiritual culture. The karmas that must be relieved in the
case of individuals who come in this condition are of the grossest and most resistive
kind. So they are not just plucked off like a pimple on your cheek. It is difficult
for you and for me, and it has always been difficult. Adi
Da Samraj, The Paradox Of Instruction |
Part 6: Crazy Wisdom and "The Way That I Teach"
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