Finding
Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part IV (Waking Up) > A (Introduction) > Chapter 2
2. Living the Lesson of Life:
Communion Hall Practice in the Way of Adidam
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| This is Part IV-A, Chapter 2 of Chris Tong's book, Finding the Divine In Person and Waking Up From the Dream. | |
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When I was five years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the assignment. I told them they didn't understand life.
What distinguishes devotees of Adi Da from most other spiritual practitioners is that they have direct access to the Divine, and therefore, direct access to unconditional, unlimited Happiness. The first demonstration of this is in what I call "Communion Hall practice". At a certain early stage in their development of practicing the Way of Adidam, no matter what state a devotee is in, he or she can walk into the Communion Hall, practice Communion with the Divine through Adi Da, and, with great consistency, walk out of the hall after some period of time feeling Happy. (And the consistency and the degree of Happiness both increase as the devotee's practice matures.) Devotees of Adi Da practice the direct approach to Happiness: being Happy through immersion in the Ocean of Happiness. In contrast, virtually everyone else attempts to indirectly become happy by improving circumstances (relationships, money, sex, jobs, meditation techniques, etc.). This approach is only capable of producing a trickle of happiness (at best) that is temporary and conditional. This chapter explores the actual nature of Happiness, which is the basis for the Way of Adidam.
Coming soon
The fundamental human urge and need is not food, sex, power, “things”, or even physical survival. The fundamental human urge and need is happiness — but not in the mere “satisfaction-of-self” sense. The fundamental human urge and need is ecstasy.
I Love the Happiness of My Devotee. That Happiness Is the Very Consciousness of every conditionally manifested being.
Coming soon
Anybody who is recognizing Me is absorbed into My State. It is a profound Transcendental Spiritual condition. That's how I tell.
"Come to Me when you are already happy."
More coming soon
Practitioners of the Communion Hall Practice I have described have an associated Realization:
- I am always already Happy.
- No matter how bad I am feeling, I can always locate the Happiness that is present "beyond the clouds", through Divine Communion.
The Sea of Happiness.
The body-mind is a mere appearance floating in the Infinite Sea of Undifferentiated Happiness — Which you visit in heart-Communion with Me, and even touch upon daily in the Grace of sleep.
So much for death, then. So much for the daily news. So much for the clinging activities of an uninspected life. . .
This appearance of life will end like any dream ends. But you Always Already Stand in the True Self-Position — having Communed with Me, and even having slept.
You need not take these objects seriously, then. You are free of the fault and the adventure and the horrible epoch (or epochs) of mere appearances.
This is your freedom, even from the beginning of the Way of Adidam.
Go to sleep in peace.
Meditate in peace.
Live in peace.
Live in depth.
Be in Depth.
Go to this Depth.
Be in this Depth.
And be Free and Happy.
Will you?
The Sun Behind the Clouds.
So now when I feel lousy, I know for certain something I didn’t know when I was younger: I am creating that lousy feeling! And I have a practice that allows me to transcend that lousy feeling. That is very different from what I believed earlier on — and different from most people still believe. I used to believe what everybody believes: certain circumstances make me unhappy; and certain circumstances make me happy. Believing that, what to do is clear: if I'm feeling unhappy currently, try to change the circumstances making me unhappy, into those that will make me happy. That’s what I believed. That’s what everyone believes!
The conditional Domain Is Not (and Can Never Be) A "Paradise".
That Is Why I Call You To Realize Me — Avatarically Self-Revealed To here, Divinely Free-Standing Above and Beyond All Of This.
Above the clouds, There Is Always The Sun — Forever Free Of Earthly weather.
By Tendency, You Are Always Looking At the local weather, and Not At The Sun Itself.
That Is What egoity Is About — Always Suffering the changes Of The local Patterning That Is the body-mind-"self" In its egoic Bondage.
Instead, You Must (In every moment) Turn To Me, Avatarically here — Manifested In Bodily (Human) Divine Form — and You Must Do This Forever, Such That (Ultimately) You Become An egoless Participant In The Conscious Light (or The weatherless Divine and Perfect Sun) Of My Supreme Divine Avataric Gift Of Most Perfect Divine En-Light-enment.
Most Perfect Divine En-Light-enment (or Divine Self-Realization) Is Not You-Realization.
Most Perfect Divine En-Light-enment (or Divine Self-Realization) Is Me-Realization.
The Inherently Perfect Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State Is What Is (By Means Of My Avatarically Given Divine Transcendental Spiritual Grace) To Be Most Perfectly Realized.
The Condition To Be (Thus) Realized Is Always Already Above and Beyond the Always Merely local weather — For I Am Not Something Inward To the ego and its Acquired Patterning.
I Am Not "Located" In The Core Of Your Suffering smallness, Below, In The weathering Dark.
The weather (Made By ego) here Can Darken all-and-All — Such That It May Seem To You There Is No Divine (and Perfectly Conscious) Light At All.
Nevertheless, In The True Practice Of Devotional Turning To Me, There Is No weather — Ever.
The Sun is the Divine. The clouds are the self-contraction and all its extensions, all the various forms of limited subjectivity (fear, sorrow, anger, anxiety, physical pain, etc.).
Those who devotionally recognize Me and devotionally respond to Me are Awakened and Transformed simply by Perfect Intrinsic Coincidence with Me.
It is as simple and direct as That.
In an operational sense, moment-to-moment recognition of Adi Da is the tacit awareness of the Sun behind the clouds in every moment — the feeling-awareness of that Perfect Coincidence with the Sun, with the Divine. That tacit awareness of the Sun is why a response is always possible and even natural when recognition is the case. In fact that tacit awareness is enough to actually grow us in practice, because in every moment we have a tacit sense of what it would be to look and feel and act completely Happy. That tacit feeling-awareness grows into full experiential awareness of the Divine Happiness pervading the entire body-mind. Thus the fullness of the beginning phase of practice in the Way of Adidam is when our experience (of and as the body-mind) is of just the Sun, with no clouds. We can describe how we get there in two different, complementary (and intertwined) ways:
- filling the body-mind with Sunlight — which is what the next chapter, Breathe Me and Feel Me In All Your Parts: Filling the Cup, is all about; or
- dissolving all the clouds so that there is only Sunlight — in which is what the later chapter, Transcending the self-Contraction, is all about.
The Sun, the Clouds, and Weather Diagrams for Different Stages of Practice
- the usual person — all clouds, a little Sun bleeds through now and then through seeking efforts.
- the beginning devotee — all clouds, but the Sun breaks through some of them consistently and regularly through Communion Hall practice.
- a moment of recognition — there may be clouds, but you can tacitly feel the Sun beyond the clouds in every direction.
- after developing the recognition capability — there may be clouds, but you can tacitly feel the Sun beyond the clouds in every direction regularly, making it much easier to allow the Sun to break through as part of an ongoing process of growth.
- filling the cup — there may be clouds, but the Sun is now present or breaking through regularly.
- full cup — consistently all Sun and no clouds.
