Finding
Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part IV (Waking Up) > C (Further Elements) > Chapter 4
4. Transcending the self-Contraction:
From Graceful Release to self-Understanding
I probably came across as a rather odd dinner guest, when I was a child and we were visiting friends of my parents. I’d sit at the table and eat with everyone else for a while. But inevitably, at some point, I’d leave the table and go lie down on the nearest couch. When our hosts would politely ask my parents what was up with me, my parents would explain that I tended to get bad stomach aches when I ate — probably acid indigestion. And I still remember the “Gelusil” antacid tablets that they got for me to take after each meal. I don’t remember them relieving my stomach distress very much, but chewing on the tablets took my mind off the cramp a bit. I also knew that I experienced this discomfort far more frequently than just at meals, so I knew there was more to it than indigestion or heartburn.
With the wisdom of hindsight and Adi Da’s Teaching many decades later, I now know that what I was experiencing as a child was actually what Adi Da calls “vital shock”, a cramp felt in the solar plexus area of the body, as a result of the vital chakra (aka the "hara") closing down significantly.
The usual man lives in what I have called “vital shock.” This shock ultimately includes more than the vital. It operates even on a very subtle level. But its most obvious and motivating form is the sense of shock in the vital being. Ordinarily, the vital, at its chief center in the midst of the body, is contracted, and a man continually feels it, even physically. He may feel a kind of cramp, this tension in the midst of the body. And every man tries to relieve it continually through various experiences, pleasures.
This vital center is like the shutter in a camera. Like the shutter in a camera, it curls in on itself in order to close, or else unfurls in order to open. It is like your hand. If you clench your fist and hold it together as tightly as you can, it begins to become painful. Just so, this vital center is alive, sentient, and when it contracts, like your hand, it creates a sensation. Not only does it create a physical sensation, but also many other reflections in life and consciousness. Therefore, when this contraction occurs in the vital, we not only get a cramp in the stomach, we have a whole life of suffering.
In this lifetime, the self-contraction starts (after the relative peace of the time in the womb) as a reaction to the shock of birth — the association of infinite consciousness with (and apparent confinement to) a limited, mortal form that is constantly under threat. That association of infinite consciousness with a limited body does not actually bind or limit consciousness. Indeed, in God-Realization, the ultimate Realization of the Way of Adidam, infinite consciousness is still associated with a limited body — but that consciousness is no longer contracting in any way, and so we no longer are bound by or suffer the body viewpoint as though it were our own. And indeed, when Avatar Adi Da was born, He was associated with the body but without self-contraction and the body identification (the limiting of one's identity to the body) that results from self-contraction. He waited until He was two years old to intentionally adopt the body's limited viewpoint — for the purpose of discovering the way out of self-contraction and body-identification, to help all the rest of us be restored to the Divine Viewpoint.
And as for all the rest of us. . . when we are born, that point of view of being a limited being — the illusion suggested by the "movie screen" of the body's sensory inputs — is so compelling that we instantly buy into it, presuming the body's point of view is our point of view, and self-protectively recoiling from the separate, threatening world around us in the reaction of self-contraction.
This reaction of self-contraction is then continuous from birth on:
There is a continuous vital contraction. . . The process itself is always instant, present, spontaneous. It is a reaction to life itself. Life is its own shock.
The awakening of consciousness into the form of life is that shock. Birth is that shock, not merely the original physical event that may be remembered, but every moment's cognition of being alive. All the events within life are just extensions of that life-shock.
You may have noticed, especially in the most difficult or anxious moments, a persistent contraction, or tension of the whole lower trunk of the body, from the heart to the abdomen. This tension often feels like a fist or a stone, or a knot. Especially in the areas of the navel or the solar plexus. It makes you chronically anxious. Not only physically tense, but emotionally, mentally, and psychically uneasy. This tangible disturbance is evidence of a severe and profound reaction to life.
The self-contraction is an activity taking place in both Consciousness and in "life" (all levels of the body-mind: physical, subtle, and causal):
Recognize the primary activity, the prior activity in consciousness. And what is the nature of that primary activity? It has two aspects. The one is separation in consciousness, this continual realization in consciousness, of separation. And the other is contraction in life. And life and consciousness are not separable, but the peculiar qualities in which this activity within us manifests itself are a separative activity at the level of consciousness and contraction in the mechanisms or functions of life. So it appears always as identification, differentiation, and desire.
The self-contraction pervades the body, all the way to the edge of the skin:
At the level of touch we read the very condition of the nervous system in space. But, as touch, that condition is blind, it is prior to the usual body sense, prior to all the intellectually organized complexity of inwardness. Inwardness vanishes, and what is seen is at the skin level. Our contraction from infinity can possibly even be measured in terms of electrical activity at the skin level. It is only when the sense of touch becomes Enlightened that the subtle activity at the level of the skin achieves the Native State and permits bodily intercourse with the Infinite Radiance.
Some of the places where the self-contraction is most evident, and some of the forms the self-contraction most often takes are:
- the vital shock in the abdomen
- the knot in the right side of the heart
- contraction in the head and jaws — this supports staying confined as the conceptual mind in the head, and separates the head from the rest of the body in feeling.
- boredom, doubt, and discomfort
Ego-bound ordinary life is characterized by a constant seeking-effort to resist boredom, doubt, and discomfort — by exploiting the functional possibilities of the body-mind-complex to try to escape the moment to moment arising of the ego-states of boredom, doubt, and discomfort.
[The self-contraction] is not just something somewhere inside the body. It’s the totality of the body-mind that is participating in this and that is reflecting this act. This is what must be gone beyond.
The self-contraction is our own activity. It creates the illusion that we are a separate self, confined to a limited, mortal body. But because it is an action, in any instant we could stop doing that action and be restored to the viewpoint of infinite, unlimited Consciousness. This is true in principle. But we have been chronically "doing" the self-contraction since birth, and we no longer are aware of it as our own activity. It has become an unconscious activity, and so a key part of the Way of Adidam is to restore that activity to consciousness so we can stop doing it. But until we begin to become conscious of it again as our own activity, it just feels like a "thing" or "solid structure", something that just is the case:
The ordinary sense that a man has, sitting, walking, is of separate existence. He doesn’t ordinarily say to himself, “I am this body, I am this mind, I am this, I am that.”
No mental process goes on that is itself the communication of this sense to him.
He already has this sense.
He wakes up alive, he moves in bodily terms, it just seems very obvious.
For this reason, we never question it, or consider the possibility that this "viewpoint" may be the result of an activity we are doing and can stop doing.
That is the process. Moving beyond your own contraction and being available to My Transcendental Spiritual Self-Transmission is It. There is not anything else. That is exactly It.
I have not Communicated to you a Way in which the seventh stage of life is the case only at the end of a lengthy process. The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is not the Way of all seven stages of life. Rather, the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is the Way of the seventh stage of life — first, always, and only.
The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is the non-egoic Way. The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is the intrinsically and immediately ego-transcending Way.
This does not mean that ego vanishes merely because you become My formally practicing devotee, or merely because you read My Divine Avataric Reality-Teaching. The ego certainly does not vanish merely because you “wave a flag” or “raise a placard” insisting that you are “not the ego any more”.
The only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam Is the Way that requires real transcending of the ego-“I” — in practice. As My devotee, you must practice right relationship to Me, turning all of the principal faculties to Me, and forgetting all the contents of the faculties themselves. Practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is not a matter of growth through the “progressive”, or first six, stages of life or the traditional “great path of return”. Rather, practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam is a matter of demonstrating the “radical”, or always “at-the-root”, ego-transcending process I Describe in My Divine Avataric Word. That is what you must do in relation to My Divinely-Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Divine Form. Worship Me whole bodily, with your very life — and do not live egoity any more.
If you are My devotee, you must accept My Teaching-Revelation that you are one-hundred-percent pure ego, not “sort of good, sort of bad”, not “black and white”, or “gray”, or “in-between”. In the realms of conditional manifestation, egoity is absolute. Therefore, the transcending of egoity requires an absolute Way.
Devotional recognition-response to Me is the Way that accommodates Me absolutely. The egoic “world” is always “grinding on”. Therefore, as My devotee, I Call you to Self-“Locate” That Which Is Prior, and to forget body and mind and “world”.
There is (always already) no ego-“ I” (or separate and independent “identity”) here—but all-and-All that arises conditionally and cosmically is only an egoless indivisible pattern patterning, Always Already Non-“ different” from the Self-Existing and Self-Radiant and Self-Evidently Divine Conscious Light That Is Eternal Witness In the Midst, and Of Which all-and-All is a merely apparent, non-necessary, and intrinsically non-binding Reflection (As in a Mirror here). The only-by-Me Revealed and Given “Radical” (or Always “At-the-Root”) Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam is, from the beginning of Its practice, based upon That Perfectly egoless Reality-Circumstance of all-and-All.
When you open your hand, what happens to your fist? When you release the self-contraction, the 'me' is gone, the search is gone, the entire principle of suffering is undermined.
Your practice of the Way of the Heart, when it is fruitful, is based on present self-understanding, present awareness of the activity of self-contraction and the relinquishment of it in Communion with Me. That true practice is what I am moving you toward and what all of your practice altogether in the Way of the Heart should be moving you toward.
Counter-egoic practices
The extensions of the self-contraction
Setting aside the conceptual mind
When you see that you are always seeking, understanding is emerging. When you see the pattern of Narcissus as all your motives, all your acts, all your seeking, understanding is emerging. When you see you are always suffering, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment is a process in dilemma, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment is a process of identification, differentiation and desire, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment, when you are at your best as well as when you are at your worst, you are only avoiding relationship, then you understand. When you see that which already is, apart from the avoidance of relationship, which already absorbs consciousness prior to the whole dilemma, motivation and activity of avoidance, then you have finally understood.
Radical Devotion and Graceful Release From the self-Contraction —
Feeling Beyond the self-Contraction and Forgetting Egoic Contents —
self-Observation: Beyond the Koan, Standing in a Deeper Place —
Counter-Egoic Disciplines —
In the case of My true devotee — who is persisting in the constancy of the intrinsically ego-transcending life-practice of whole bodily devotional recognition-response to Me, always turning to Me and surrendering to Me with the faculties of body, emotion, mind, and breath — whenever he or she enters (thus) into immediate proximity to My Divine Avataric Person, Presence, and State, the egoic “self”-contraction of body, emotion, mind, and breath spontaneously relaxes into My Perfectly egoless Transcendental Spiritual Self-Presence.
In the any event of such (thus) spontaneous relaxation of the egoic “self”-contraction of body, emotion, mind, and breath into My Perfectly egoless Transcendental Spiritual Self-Presence, body is Sublimed in egoless “Brightness”, thought is vanished in Consciousness Itself, emotion is vanished in the Love-Bliss-Current of Intrinsic Being, and a whole-bodily-breathing Awakens in My Divinely Avatarically Self-Transmitted Transcendental Spiritual and Perfectly egoless Self-State — such that all of separateness, relatedness, otherness, and “difference” is not happened in the Event. This Is My Divine Avataric Gift to all who devotionally recognize Me, devotionally respond to Me, and (forever) devotionally turn to Me.Graceful Release of the self-Contraction From the Outside In. Adi Da's Transmission dissolves the self-contraction, from the outside in:
When Love is altogether true, when Its Radiance Shines so hard it opens up the hand, then there is only Real God — and Real God Is Love. Love is the Sacrifice of Man.
Graceful Release of the self-Contraction From the Inside Out. When we allow Adi Da in, in Divine Communion, He then can "become us", and release the self-contraction from the inside out. This was something He began doing the day He was Re-Awakened to Divine Enlightenmment, on September 10, 1970:
In this most perfect Realization of Non-separateness [on September 10, 1970], many extraordinary Divine Siddhis suddenly, spontaneously appeared. . . I spontaneously began to "meditate" countless other people, and also countless non-human beings, and countless places and worlds and realms, both high and low in the scale of Reality. I observed and responded to all that was required for the Awakening and the true (and the Ultimate) well-being of each and all. And, each time I did this (and, in fact, the process quickly became the underlying constant of all my hours and days), I would continue the "meditating" of any (and each) one until I felt a release take place, such that his or her suffering and seeking was vanished (or, at least, significantly relaxed and set aside). Whenever that occurred, I Knew my "meditating" of that one was, for the moment, done. By such means, my now and forever Divine Work (by Which I must Teach, and Bless, and Awaken all and All) began.
When you see that you are always seeking, understanding is emerging. When you see the pattern of Narcissus as all your motives, all your acts, all your seeking, understanding is emerging. When you see you are always suffering, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment is a process in dilemma, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment is a process of identification, differentiation and desire, understanding is emerging. When you see that every moment, when you are at your best as well as when you are at your worst, you are only avoiding relationship, then you understand. When you see that which already is, apart from the avoidance of relationship, which already absorbs consciousness prior to the whole dilemma, motivation and activity of avoidance, then you have finally understood.
The listening practice takes place at the core, not the periphery or the layer of subjectivity:
Thus, the practice of Adidam includes both “radical” devotion to Me and “self”-understanding. But it requires just such depth of Listening to Me, just such tacit observation, in every moment. And, from that, all the elaboration of the practice can be understood, embraced, and animated. But you must be in exactly the disposition that I just Called you to. You must be exactly in that disposition, moment to moment. Not in the reacting, desiring, seeking, concentrating-on-“objects”-and-“others”. Not that — just in the mode of observing the inherent stress that is behind all of that.
The Periphery: the Search for Happiness and the Achievement of Desensitization.
See that you are only seeking. Examine yourself and find this out. Understand that seeking is a pursuit of union. This is obvious, is it not?
Your search is like this: You go to bed with your girlfriend or boyfriend in order to get a good feeling. You go to meditate to get a good feeling. You practice devotion to Me to get a good feeling. You have lunch to get a good feeling. And getting that good feeling is the purpose of your seeking. It releases some level of your stress. You think that unioning, the success of the effort towards union, the adjacency to this, that, or the other thing, will give you a little bit of good feeling. You are always seeking to achieve that in everything you are doing. You are always seeking to achieve that feeling of release, that good feeling. This is why you do everything you do. Everything you are doing, you are doing in order to achieve that good feeling. And you think that that is the goal of life.
That has nothing whatever to do with the Way of Adidam. That is what you are already doing, and that is what you must find out. You are always seeking, and you are full of stress in that seeking. Your seeking is always an effort to achieve union with this, that, or the other thing. And whenever you get this thing or the other, whatever it may be, whenever you perform that action you want to perform with whatever you have acquired, you get a good feeling. An orgasm is just such a good feeling. That is what you are looking for all the time.
Why do you read books? Watch TV? Try to figure things out? Why? Because you are looking to come to the point of that good feeling, where there is some sense of release from stress, but whatever release you may achieve is not consequential, not final. There is no self-understanding in it. It is not the end of seeking. It is just one moment to be followed by another pursuit.
You must find out about yourself as a seeker. The first thing you must find out is that you are a seeker, and that seeking is all you are doing. Take a look at everything you are doing. Seeking is all you are doing. There is no moment of your life when you are not doing it. There is no circumstance in your life in which you are not doing it. There is no relationship in which you are not doing it. If you get a good feeling, it is like an orgasm. There is a temporary feeling of satisfaction, but you are still sitting there separate, all by yourself as you are, still sitting on your own uninspected knot. But because you get the moment of good feeling, you try and repeat it over and over again with everything you do.
But you do not even get that feeling every time. When you go to bed with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you do not get all that you would like to get every time. But that does not stop the search. The good feeling happens often enough that you keep doing it.
But nothing has been transcended. The actual nature of conditional existence has not been found. The presumption of separation still exists. You may have achieved some sort of feeling relative to some object or other, but that is not it. Something sexual with an intimate partner or a good lunch or a vision of the Divine Star or some other visionary or mystical experience and so forth—they are all objects pursued by the same seeker for the same reason, and it just throws you back on yourself. Whether you are in the good feeling or dwelling in the stresses of seeking, it is all just the same. It is just you presuming to be separate, still not having understood.
the search for union, perfect distraction, the resulting "lesser samadhis"
The Layer of Subjectivity: Fear, Sorrow, Anger, Pleasure, Pain, Boredom, Doubt, Discomfort.
You can't stay at the core without sufficient experience of Adi Da's Divine State of Happiness to transcend all the reactivity in the layer of subjectivity (like boredom, doubt, and discomfort):
Boredom, doubt, and discomfort are not merely to be endured and suffered.
Rather, it is always necessary to directly and intrinsically transcend boredom, doubt, and discomfort, by directly and intrinsically transcending the "self"-contraction, so that — instead of being limited to boredom, doubt, and discomfort, and the motives of escape — you participate directly in the Transcendental Spiritual Divine Self-Nature, Self-Condition, and Self-State of Reality Itself.
"Smoothing out" the subjectivity; dissolving all difference/separation
The Core: the self-Contraction, Radical Devotion, and self-Understanding.
A Simple, Growth-Oriented Checklist.
A simple checklist oriented toward growth in practice: What percentage of time do you spend each day in: the periphery? the subjectivity layer? the core?
Emphasis on ever greater depth. Also includes the primary purpose of devotional groups: identifying lapses in radical devotion — in other words, things that cause one to fall out of the core and "fly" to the subjectivity layer or the periphery, and take on counter-egoic disciplines aimed at keeping one in the core. (When The Tiger Disappears)
Listening: Understanding the self-Contraction As Our Own Activity
"Getting Down": Becoming Responsible for the Contraction of the Vital and All Internal Contraction
A Major Lesson in self-Understanding
You have to stay at "the core", constantly conscious at the depth of feeling where the self-contraction manifests. If you forsake this level of conscious awareness, the vital shock will re-knot, and you will find yourself “outside” it again.
The place where one is standing as the self-contraction (and therefore can release the self-contraction) is also the place of maximum feeling of the pain of the self-contraction. The pain also demarcates the boundary of the "area" or "shape" that must be released. Any lesser feeling means you are not fully feeling (or centered with your feeling-awareness in) the self-contraction yet — you are still somewhat outside it, hence the lesser degree of pain.
References:
- Vital Shock in My "Bright" Word
- April 8, 1993 consideration of the process of listening
If you cannot release that knot, then you cannot breathe down the frontal line — and you will just be chronically anxious, practicing in a superficial manner for the rest of your life, never going beyond the beginner’s stage of the practice of Adidam.
You must be able to breathe down the frontal line.
Then you must be able to let the Circle complete itself up the spinal line. You must breathe and feel through and beyond the anxiety over your solar plexus — completely do it.
Now you get a little trickle down below the knot in the solar plexus. But you are not allowing the frontal line to be opened.
You are chronically anxious.
You must be able to breathe through that knot, to allow that knot to be opened up, so the full Force can be breathed down the frontal line.
And, in order to do that, you must be able to get in touch with your emotional limits — not merely to torture yourself, but to “know” that you can feel and breathe beyond that anxiety.
You are satisfied with a twenty-watt connection to your muladhar.
But I am Telling you that the “conductivity” in the frontal line must be full all the way down to the base of the body.
That means you must be released of your anxiety.
And that requires great force of practice and Great Grace (Which is Freely Given to you).
It requires great force of practice in response to That Grace.
Generally, you are just doing the practice under the ordinary circumstances of daily life, including sitting in meditation.
You must be released of the anxiety about the body. You do not have to turn away from the body, but you must be released of your anxiety about it.
You must get in touch with that limit and stop holding on to it in order to live your lifetime as My devotee, rather than living your lifetime as a “fan” of Mine — toying with the practice, fulfilling it only minimally.
You must breathe and feel through and beyond the anxiety over your solar plexus — completely do it.
That is what I am Calling you to do every day.
You must get to the point where you know you can have an easy death — in other words, that you can relinquish the body when necessary.
First, you must Find My Love-Bliss-Happiness.
Then, you must notice the various things you do that make you feel separate from That Happiness.
Everybody is living as if this is a hell, rather than life in Real God.
I Call you to observe and understand the entire emotional-sexual process, and to abandon everything about it that is withdrawal from My Divine Love-Bliss.
You must not merely find out what good behavior is.
You must Find Me — and you must not do anything that will separate you from devotional Communion with Me.
Practice of the Way in My Divine Avataric Company is a matter of intensifying the act of turning to Me and intensifying your sensitivity to the “act of Narcissus”.
Use the incidents of life to increase this sensitivity — not to abuse yourself, or to make yourself feel like a hero.
Nobody is that heroic. Therefore, I Call you to live by My Divine Avataric Grace.
You cannot go beyond yourself by struggling with yourself.
You go beyond yourself by becoming Distracted by Me.
You must Find What is Adorable, Find the Beloved, and be Distracted out of yourself.
As I began to stay in the core, I began to feel the vital shock in my abdomen. But I also began to feel a feeling of hopelessness that also had been buried or submerged in the subconscious along with the feeling of this vital shock. That hopelessness was the end result of many long-ago attempts to try to get rid of the bad feeling of the vital shock and not being able to do so. It led to the conclusion that getting rid of it was hopeless, and that the only alternative I had was to bury the feeling of it beneath all the things that define the seeker: a whole host of distractions, a desensitization in feeling, etc.
I was delighted to discover that, after a few weeks of consciously feeling beyond the vital shock in the abdominal region, the entire region was relatively free of contraction much of the time, and didn't require a great deal of "maintenance". What a relief! For all I knew, it could have turned out that I'd be required to actively feel beyond the vital shock in every moment, and if I let up for an instant, the vital chakra would snap shut again. But thankfully that is not the case! As Adi Da puts it: with counter-egoic practice, the self-contraction gets flabby.
An aspect of mastering the vital shock: very slow deep breathing.
In the natural process of this feeling-Contemplation of What Is, the breath has become minute. There are no big movements of the breather. The breath is hardly noticeable. It is a tiny sniff in and out. Frequently there are no opposites, there is no movement, there is no inhalation-exhalation. Finally, there is kumbhak, or suspension of breath, and, thereby, suspension of attention to body and exercises of emotion and mind in combination with conditions, and there is direct entrance into the Contemplative state, in the form of various Samadhis.
Understanding the Natural and Neurotic Phasing of the self-Contraction. The self-contraction is not monochromatic — just a permanently clenched tight fist. Instead, it is a pattern of activity that goes through phases where we are more contracted and less contracted. One source of phasing is the self-contraction itself, a mechanism that has its own "natural" pattern of psychophyical phasing. In the following quote, Adi Da describes "doubt" as the product of the self-contraction going through a contractive phase. But because virtually all people are unaware of the self-contraction, they don't realize that, during a downward phase of the self-contraction, everything looks darker — not because it really is, but because we are wearing the self-contraction's dark-colored "glasses" and so are unwittingly projecting that darkness onto everything.
You must understand yourself sufficiently to realize that doubt is not about a "something". You didn't start going into doubt because suddenly the thing you now doubt was coming into doubt. You started to collapse into this doubt simply as a phase, even a biological phase, what is really a psychophysical phasing of self-contraction. All kinds of influences cause it to do this, including just the mechanism itself is adapted to cycles of collapse and reopening, collapse and reopening like the moon phasing. There's this constant cycle of self-contraction occurring. And when it occurs, we read it mentally, emotionally, physically, read in terms of our energy. And then we also read it in terms of our relations.
ADI DA: This Way is all about feeling.
Why it works: the self-contraction is a limit on feeling.
Now, what have you learned in the course of your life? Have you learned to feel perfectly? To feel absolutely? Did you ever go through a period of study in which you learned to feel to Infinity, to feel the Very Divine? No—you learned all the reactive patterns of life, all the desires for ordinary things. You cannot feel any better than you can feel—and you are addicted to feeling less than love, to being less than ecstatic. When you come into contact with Me, this is what you begin to understand about yourself. Sometimes, for no particular reason, you may suddenly be given a moment in which you feel much better. But, then, that moment passes. What was the purpose of it? To help you become aware that you can feel better.
The expansion I am describing [that is God-Realization] is the expansion that comes when you puncture a balloon and it is equalized with all space.
Listen to Me. Register this sensation of stress, this fundamental disturbance. Enter into it most profoundly.
In so doing, you will discover the “self”-contraction to be your own action. And, in that mere discovery — not by some other effort — the opening begins. Then you devotionally respond to Me more profoundly. Then you can feel Me more deeply. And, in that magnified feeling of Me, you are turned to Me, you are surrendered to Me, and you are forgetting yourself.
Thus, the practice of Adidam includes both “radical” devotion to Me and “self”-understanding. But it requires just such depth of Listening to Me, just such tacit observation, in every moment. And, from that, all the elaboration of the practice can be understood, embraced, and animated. But you must be in exactly the disposition that I just Called you to. You must be exactly in that disposition, moment to moment. Not in the reacting, desiring, seeking, concentrating-on-“objects”-and-“others”. Not that — just in the mode of observing the inherent stress that is behind all of that.
In the observation of that stress, it dissolves. Then you can exercise the “conscious process”, “conductivity” practice, “self”-discipline, service, meditation. The depth of devotion made possible by real “self”-understanding is “radical” devotion to Me. And you see how quiet it is. To be feeling Me thus — that is devotion.
In your life of devotion to Me for real, if you have moments of kirtan, moments of moving ecstasy, fine! Be demonstrative in your devotion to Me, but on the basis of this in-depth observation, which is necessarily quiet, not seeking — truly observing yourself, truly observing that fundamental stress that is motivating everything you are doing. That is the place of true devotion to Me. If there is any devotion to Me that is physically more moved and louder, and so forth, it should be based on that heart-matter, truly done. That is why the practice of ego-transcending devotion to Me can be done in the Communion Hall, where nobody says a word, nobody makes a movement, basically (except for a few kriyas). It is a quiet place. That is why this practice can be meditative.
But, even in your moving life, it must be this profound. This depth must be registered by you. That is the moment to moment practice. But you are already busy all the time, and never get to the point of in-depth examination of the stress that is the “self”-contraction. If you were doing that, you would see how the mode of your living would change by not living superficially, but by living in this depth of examination, this depth of devotion to Me. It would change everything. And so it should! That is actually what I am Calling you to do! Actually to do that! To Listen to Me deeply — and, thereby, to account for the “self”-contraction in depth — makes all the difference. Just that Listening grants equanimity to you, even bodily. It grants equanimity to your speech, your actions, your feelings — because you are registering the depth-point of the “self”-contraction, and going beyond it, and feeling Me.
That — rather than mere outer observances — is the context of practice. That is what it means to Listen to Me — to be observing the point of contraction in depth, feeling it, and, by its dissolving, feeling Me. That is “self”-understanding and devotion to Me — two fundamental elements of the Reality-Way of Adidam—accounted for in the same instant. That is what it is to practice the Reality-Way of Adidam moment to moment.
Reducing the Triggering, Re-Knotting, and Strength of the self-Contraction
Understanding that the self-contraction has phases is very useful in the development of self-understanding. For example, in my own experience, I have found it much easier to not re-knot the self-contraction than to release it when it is tightly knotted.
I noticed that in situations where I usually had been strongly contracted (all my life) now the contraction was much weaker and often not there at all.
Not re-knotting is a very powerful part of self-understanding. Much sooner than you might think, you stop contracting in circumstances where you’ve always contracted your whole life. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been expecting to feel myself contracted in a certain circumstance — and I’m not!
Avoiding re-knotting and avoiding even re-triggering is of special importance in the period before you’ve fully heard. Example of avoiding re-triggering: moving my car seat back.
Satsang with Me must be enjoyed as the Condition of life. Then the entire ego-drama—of which even traditional Spirituality is a manifestation—comes to an end, dies. The self-contraction becomes flabby and releases. The Real Power of Consciousness Manifests Itself, Drawing you more deeply into the sadhana in My Avataric Divine Company.
The effect of this non-support is that the quality of contraction in you begins to become self-evident. The search winds down, the suffering becomes self-evident, and, intuitively, you become alive within it. This quality of contraction simply begins to get flabby and fall apart. You begin to re-cognize it, to know it again. Therefore, in that living association, or relationship, with Me, I Live the Divine Self to you, whereas in all other conditions it is this contraction, the avoidance of relationship, that is lived to you.
Positive Disillusionment Revisited
In an earlier chapter, I introduced Adi Da's concept of positive disillusionment, and described what that looked like in my own case, which was key to my becoming a devotee.
Not settling for the "beginner's plateau" in practice. Growth in the practice of Adidam occurs in levels. Because it is possible for devotees to "settle" for practice at a particular level (and its benefits at that level), the process of positive disillusionment is an ongoing one.When devotees reach the point of what I have called "Communion Hall practice", part of the reason they tend to "plateau" there is because they settle for the benefits of that level of practice. Moving to the level of moment-to-moment, whole bodily Divine Communion requires something greater of devotees — and therefore requires a revisiting of positive disillusionment.
Another such consideration will be required in enabling the transition to the Perfect Practice. Will one settle for Divine Communion, while still remaining body-identified, an "organism"? Or will one recognize the limits of body-based Divine Communion, and be moved to grow beyond them?
So the ongoing process of positive disillusionment is to find what one is currently settling for with one's current stage of practice, become disillusioned with it, and be moved to grow further in practice,.
The Adidam Reality principle: long-term God-Communion versus short-term pleasure
DEVOTEE: How do I bring myself to the point of not wanting?
ADI DA: Wanting and not wanting are both forms of the same activity. It is all the same occupation, preoccupation, distraction, fascination-moment to moment.
DEVOTEE: How do I get over that?
ADI DA: The desire to get over it is simply more of the adventure. It is the adventure of getting over it. It is all the same. The fact of the matter is that you are self-contracted and all your actions, your desires, and even your questions are only descriptions of that state of self-contraction. The Truth is of another variety. But this lesson about your present and usual state can be useful. It is the first lesson of Wisdom.
If life begins only to hurt, if all the alternatives fall into you, if they cease to be a real option, if you find yourself continually stuck in the crisis in consciousness, the root-form of suffering, on the basis of which your search springs into action, when that becomes the nature of your daily life, then Truth becomes attractive to you. Then Satsang, Searchless Beholding of Me, with Me, Real life, becomes a living possibility. It will be your obvious need when you have no options.
DEVOTEE: I am already aware that none of these things work.
ADI DA: That is evidence of some small wisdom, because you are becoming exhausted with experience. But the seeker in you still possesses some potency. The seeker is still springing into action, still reacting to the root-dilemma. When the "springing" stops, or when it begins to seem impossible, when the alternatives do not quite "have" you, when the potency of the search begins to decline, then you can truly embrace Real religious and Spiritual life.
When you are no longer attempting to immunize yourself against your suffering, then the Force of Truth, the Force of Reality, Which Is Truth, can begin to move in you. Then truly effective Satsang, Searchless Beholding, with Me becomes possible because, at that point, It has a function. But, while the search is still your "task", still your fascination, Truth, or Reality, is not really your concern. Until the search is understood, you relate to Truth Itself, or Reality Itself, only as an alternative, a symbol, another form of distraction.
Therefore, as has always been understood in the esoteric traditions, Truth, or Real life, requires passing through a crisis of dilemma, or doubt. That crisis is the "fuel" of Liberation. When the search, the reaction to your dilemma, begins to wind down, to the point that only the dilemma remains only your root-suffering, only your fundamental dis-ease then the Force of Reality begins to move into your life. Then your real question can be answered.
Until then, your questions are your entertainment, your amusement. They have no ultimate importance. They are the forms of preoccupation and unconscious self-description. In that case, "religious life" or "Spiritual life" is only an amusement, only an entertainment. In that case, meditation, reading religious and Spiritual books, all of that, is only another form of erotica, of mere "significance".
But, when your hunger becomes intelligent, when you become consciously aware of your dis-ease, then the Avataric Divine Truth-Revealed through My Spoken and Written Avataric Divine Siddha-Word, and Revealed by Means of My Avataric Divine Siddha-Form, truly becomes what you require. You become intelligent with that Truth-Revealing Word and Form, and you respond. You recognize Me at heart. Only on that basis does the True Spiritual process, the Real-God-Realizing process, begin. Until you heart-recognize Me and heart-respond to Me, the Real God-Realizing process has not yet begun, has not yet entered the picture in any real sense.
To begin with, everyone is a seeker. But, if you have been brought to examine the futility and the causes of your own adventure, then, at some point, the process will very likely become something more than academic for you.
When you come to the point where the force of your life is no longer fully captured by your search, when you know that your search is failing, that your search does not produce salvation, when you fall from ordinary fascination into crisis, a form of despair, of doubt, then, at that point, you have become deeply available for Satsang with Me, for the heart-relationship to Me which is True religious and Spiritual life.
Satsang with Me is the answer.
Satsang with Me is the process and Condition wherein the dilemma is undone.
No spoken or written work, but rather the very relationship to Me, the Living True Divine Heart, is the Real answer.
The answer is not in the form of an ego-serving method, a strategic technique, or a conceptual system that addresses your particular notions of human existence.
The answer is the Self-Evident Manifestation of Truth, and that answer undermines that very structure in your conscious awareness that supports your entire search.
This becomes a Real possibility only when you have begun to suffer from your search, when you have begun to sense its failure, when you are no longer totally occupied by it. Then you become available to Satsang with Me. And Satsang with Me is non-support of your dilemma, non-support of your search.
Where the Hearer Stands: Transcendental Root-Standing
Diagram of positions where you can stand (associated with identity release and identity shift):
head → whole body → Transcendental Root-Standing → the Sphere of the "Thumbs" → Consciousness → Conscious Light. (More in Appendix 3.)
You are "working" this puja of transcending the self-contraction in four parts: the head area; the heart area; the vital area; and the breath. The ultimate, whole bodily understanding that is hearing is a development of surrendering the whole body via simultaneous surrender of its four parts.
Hearing is a capability for releasing the entirety of the self-contraction that has been revealed to date. Until Divine Enlightenment, it is not a means for releasing the self-contraction in its entirety, or hearing would be Divine Enlightenment. So it initially releases the self-contraction of the body abd its four faculties. But the knot in the right side of the heart is still intact, because it has not yet been revealed. Hearing allows every newly discovered form of the self-contraction be released — and this is why Adi Da said that, once you develop the hearing capability, "you'll move through these stages [of practice] like a hot knife through butter".
Once you Hear Me the past has no great force and no great importance—in spite of all apparently “subjective” evidence. Thus, the foundation level of practice is persistence in devotion and love, without concern for “subjective” evidence. That is when the “subjectivity” of your old adaptation, of your gross reflection, becomes obsolete. You can truly be sensitive to the subtle dimension of the being only if the archaisms of gross adaptation are essentially weak, secondary, and superficial. And they only become so through your persistence in the foundationary disciplines of right life—in other words, by fundamentally moving beyond the first three stages of life.
Listening-Hearing-Seeking in The Knee Of Listening: Adi Da's Ordeal Prior To Having Adi Da's Teaching. Adi Da's initial experience of hearing (at Columbia University) was what He now refers to as "Transcendental Root-Standing". He was standing prior to all identification with patterns of egoic seeking and prior to body identification. But He couldn't maintain that hearing because He did not yet have additional understanding, including: the ego as self-contraction, the activity of avoidance of relationship; hearing as a realization capable of reinforcing itself, without resorting to any seeking, etc. He did not have the enormous advantage we do now of His fully elaborated Teaching about self-understanding. He had not yet learned the utility of taking on disciplines to serve and maintain self-understanding. (That would only come later when He met Rudi.) Instead, He was learning about the self-contraction in a more piecemeal fashion. And that is why the order of the chapters in The Knee Of Listening is "The Listener", "Hearing", and "The Seeker".
Hearing as Adi Da first experienced it at Columbia was the consequence of what He now calls "positive disillusionment" — to the extreme!
The inability to make an effort or to assume a proposition representing one or the other side of a dynamic possibility or one or the other side of the contradiction of the problem that you're being . . . when you can't make an answer, when you can't go further, when you can't penetrate the Koan, you can't penetrate the great question, only the total is before you, you cannot move, you're in an absolute state of frustration, you can't think what to do next, you don't know what possibly could happen next, you could be in this state for the rest of your life, when you get to that point of tension, it's precisely in that disposition that hearing awakens.
The Devotional Way of Insight and the Devotional Way of Faith
My Teaching Is This: Turn to Me, and understand
Later, because He would discover that most devotees were not able to do this, Adi Da amended it to:
Turn to Me and understand. If you cannot do this, then understand and turn to Me.
Both of these were to be done on the basis of devotional response. "Turn to Me and understand" was a summary description of "the Devotional Way of Faith", where self-understanding is a consequence or side effect of the turning to (and recognition of) Adi Da. "Understand and turn to Me" was a summary description of "the Devotional Way of Insight", for devotees whose devotional response alone was not sufficient to transcend the self-contraction and restore recognition, so the practice of self-inquiry would assist in that process.
From The Beginning Of My Teaching-Work, I Taught The Great Heart-Way Of self-Understanding and self-Transcendence. Therefore, For The Sake Of those who Are Able To Commune With Me Especially (or Primarily) By The Exercise Of Feeling and Faith, I Taught The Way Of Adidam As The Devotional Way Of Faith or The Way Of Direct, or Unmediated, Devotionally Me-Recognizing Devotional Feeling-Response To Me), and Which Way (Progressively, and By The Exercise Of The True Heart-Discipline Of Spontaneously Responsive Surrender Of self-Contraction, Merely By Means Of The Devotionally Me-Recognizing Devotional Response To Me) Becomes Most Fundamental self-Understanding and The Great Capability For self-Transcendence (and The Spiritual Practice Of ego-Transcending Devotion To Me).
How the Ruchiradam Event Changed the Listening-Hearing Process
Because I (Myself, rather than any other means) Am the Intrinsic and Always Self-Evident Revelation and the “Radical” (or Always “At-the-Root”) Way of Reality Itself, the “Radical” Reality-Way of Adidam Ruchiradam That I have Revealed and Given—and for Which I (Myself) Am (now, and forever hereafter) the Fundamental and Essential Means—is an intrinsically egoless and thoroughly non-seeking practice, not of “self”-Enquiry (in the form “Avoiding relationship?”), but, rather, of “radical” (or always “at-the-root”) and, altogether, whole-bodily-demonstrated recognition-responsive devotion to Me, right-life obedience to Me, and “Perfect Knowledge” of Me (Transcendentally Spiritually Self-“ Bright” As I Am), engaged within the cooperative devotional culture of perpetual whole-bodily-recognition-responsive Invocation of Me, perpetual Sighting of My Divinely-Avatarically-Born bodily (human) Person, and perpetual Listening to My Divinely Avatarically Self-Revealed Word of Reality-Teaching.
How the Core Practice of Radical Devotion (The Way Of Me) Supercedes the Earlier Practice of Radical Understanding
FOOTNOTES
