Celebrations > Danavira Mela / The Season of Light-In-Everybody

The Best Season of the Whole Year

In Adidam, Danavira Mela, or "The Season of Light-In-Everybody", lasts from early November to the January 11th Celebration of Avatar Adi Da's Divine Self-"Emergence". It is a season that is (as Adi Da described it), “essentially about Light, and about that Light in everybody. It is about acknowledging the characteristic of Light in everybody you know and meet, rather than darkness. It is about love rather than its opposite."

It is also a time when devotees celebrate their relationship with Avatar Adi Da Samraj and their intimacy with one another special ways such as gift making, gift giving, and special occasions of sacred offerings from the various guilds in Adidam. It is a time for telling many stories of Avatar Adi Da's life and devotees' interaction with Him. Danavira Mela means literally "the Celebration (Mela) of the Hero (vira) of Giving (Da). Previous names for this celebration include "the Feast of Acception" and "the Feast of God in Everybody".

You can read more about Danavira Mela in The Danavira Mela Book.

I love this season of celebration. In human terms, it is really the best season of the whole year. Rightly engaged, this season should be the most splendid, loving time of every year.

Every year, I am concentrated in this celebration. I have been since My childhood. When I was a child, the holidays were a major event. I always received many gifts, but the occasion was not interesting to Me because I received gifts.

It was interesting to Me because of the spirit of giving gifts — the beauty of it, the joy, the happiness of it, the whole spirit, the whole orientation of this time of year when people give gifts to one another and happily receive gifts.

The giving is the meaning of this season, you see. I love the disposition expressed through giving. Every year, when you participate in this ceremony of gift-giving, it should be a ceremonial expression, enacted during this season, of how you live all the time.

On special occasions during this season, you celebrate ceremonially the fundamental act with which you are involved all the time.

Gift-giving is delightful, but your giving of gifts should be a celebration of how you live every day, a confirmation of your life with Me, and with everyone you know and meet, even with all humankind.

This basic expression should continue through the New Year, and it should confirm your disposition all year.

* * *

This is the secret of the ego-transcending process. I am always Giving the great Gift of My Divine Love and Blessing. When My devotees love Me and practice the Way that I have Given them, that is their gift.

When My devotees love Me and practice, and when I Love them and Bless them, there is this exchange with one another.

Then, every year during this season, I express ceremoniously what I have done with My devotees, and what they have done with Me, all year long. This is the secret of My participation in this celebration.

Know that I Bless you through and beyond time and space. Live a life of celebration. True life, ego-transcending life, is a celebration, a joyous occasion of meeting with others in the universal circumstance of prior unity and in the joy of Communion with the Indivisible Divine Reality.

That is why I look forward to this season every year. It is the greatest season of the year. It is a marvelous season. I hope it is a happy time for you and for all of your friends.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, “The Feast of God in Every Body”, December 25, 1982
excerpt from The Danavira Mela Book

Return to Celebrations