Practical Lessons in
The Way of Adidam


Avatar Adi Da


Both individually and collectively, Adi Da's devotees have learned many lessons about how to practice the Way of Adidam in a fruitful manner. This section contains stories of devotees living various aspects of the practice. These experiential stories complement the instructions and descriptions in the Source Texts and practical texts, helping to bring Avatar Adi Da's words to life, and illustrating (sometimes unexpected) issues that may come up in the actual living of the practice.

We have only just opened this new section; over time, we will be adding many more stories and lessons from devotees.

This section is organized as follows:

  1. Lessons about the Core Practice
    1. Devotional Recognition of Adi Da
    2. Positive Disillusionment
  2. Lessons about Egoic Patterning
    1. Oedipal / Emotional-Sexual Patterning
    2. Character Type: Solid, Peculiar, Vital
    3. Rudi's Trifecta: Self-Pity, Negativity, and Self-Imagery
  3. Lessons about the Functional, Practical, and Relational Disciplines
    1. Diet
  4. Lessons about the Cultural Practices
    1. Devotional Chanting
    2. Visiting and Making Right Use of the Adidam Empowered Sanctuaries, Holy Sites, and Communion Halls
    3. The Devotional Prayer of Changes
    4. Practice Consideration Groups



1. Lessons About the Core Practice

Devotional recognition of Adi Da. The core of the practice of the Way of Adidam is devotional recognition of Adi Da as the Divine. It is the moment of Revelation (and eventually, the moment-to-moment capability) that defines the devotee of Avatar Adi Da.

For There To Be True Adidam, There Must Be A Culture Of Devotional (or "Radical") Recognition Of Me, The Devotion To Me That Is Always "At The Root" — Not By Working On "self", Not By Turning attention "Within" (Through Dissociative Introversion), but Simply Through Whole bodily Recognition-Response To Me.

If There Is A Culture That "Objectifies" Me and Reinforces The ego-Position In people, Addresses them As egos and consumers, Then You Never Have Adidam — Never.

Therefore, The Gathering Of My Devotees Must Manifest The Culture Of True "Radical" Devotion To Me.

The Culture Of Devotion To Me Is An Invocation-Culture, A Recognition-Responsive Culture, A Global Culture Of Adidam, In Which My Devotees (who Devotionally Recognize Me) Extend The Gift Of My Person and My Self-Revelation Everywhere, and With Full Effectiveness — Because They Are Full Of Me.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Recognition Of Me Is Liberation


The worship of the "Bright" must be established in this conditional realm. I Am the inherently egoless Divine (and Acausal) Person and the Avatarically-Born Divine (and Acausal) Self-Revelation of the "Bright".

I must (in and as My Avatarically-Born bodily human Divine Form and Person) be whole bodily (or in a total psycho-physical, and, ultimately, most perfectly egoless, manner) heart-recognized as the "Bright".

Only one who thus (ever more deeply) heart-recognizes Me is My true (and, ultimately, truly perfect) devotee. . .

I am not merely in the Divine State.

I Am the Divine State — here and forever now.

My inherent Divine State and inherently egoless Divine Personal Identity is (now, and forever hereafter) spontaneously Self-Transmitting itself — as Me (Avatarically Self-Manifested in and as My Avatarically-Born bodily human Divine Form, and Avatarically Self-Transmitted as and by means of My always-Blessing Divine Spiritual Presence, and, altogether, Avatarically Self-Revealed as My Divine, and very, and inherently egoless State).

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Chapter 17, The Scapegoat Book


Primary cultural resources on devotional recognition of Adi Da include the books, Recognition Of Me Is Liberation and Right Life Is Free Participation In Unlimited Radiance (particularly "Part Two: Right-Life Practice Is An Unfolding of Devotional Recognition-Response To Me"). Another useful resource is our article, The Significance of Recognition in the Way of Adidam.

 
The Graceful Key to Recognition of Adi DaMichael Shaw tells the story of moving beyond the mind and the search to "get it". From the consideration period known as "The Overnight Revelation of Conscious Light."
Michael Shaw
   
 

Positive disillusionment. A secondary dimension of the core practice is positive disillusionment. It is one of the key prerequisites for actually advancing in the practice of the Way of Adidam.


Before the foundation phase (or first phase) of the ego-transcending Great Process of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam can (itself) be complete, it must Realize a profoundly life-transforming and life-reorienting “positive disillusionment”, or a most fundamental (and really and truly “self”-contraction-transcending) acceptance of the fact that gross conditional existence is inherently and necessarily unsatisfactory and unperfectable (and, therefore, a most fundamental — and really and truly Me-Finding and search-ending — acceptance of the fact that all seeking to achieve permanent and complete gross satisfaction of separate body, emotion, and mind is inherently and necessarily futile). Only on the basis of that necessary foundation-Realization of “positive disillusionment” can the functional life-energy and the attention of the entire body-mind-complex (or of the total body-brain-mind) be released from gross ego-bondage (or “self”-deluded confinement to the psycho-physical illusions of gross “self”-contraction).

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Chapter 17, The Gnosticon


Because all of us have engaged in illusions about the nature of happiness for lifetimes, it can take us quite a few years (or even lifetimes) to go through the "positive disillusionment" process. While conventionally, the word, "disillusionment", has a mixed connotation (e.g., "older but wiser"), Adi Da refers to the process associated with Him as "positive" because the disillusionment frees up one's life and destiny for a Greater Alternative.

A primary cultural resource on positive disillusionment is Adi Da's essay, "Perfect Dis-Illusionment", in Part 8 of The Aletheon. You can also watch this video.

Until one has successfully completed the "positive disillusionment" consideration, one tends to be "double-minded": having one foot in the "self-fulfillment" camp, and one foot in the "self-transcendence" camp, with the bigger foot in self-fulfillment, compromising one's practice of the Way of Adidam. With positive disillusionment, the "self-fulfillment" alternative collapses, double-mindedness disappears, and both one's feet are now solidly in the "self-transcendence" camp.


You cannot be trying to fulfill the ego and your egoic conventional patterning, and transcend it at the same time. You must relinquish it utterly, altogether. The two do not come together. It is a sadhana, and that is that.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, February 19, 2001
from "Who Wants My Mastery?"


There are many dimensions to the "positive disillusionment" consideration, including:

  • really getting that "it doesn't work out here", including really feeling and accepting the reality of one's mortality. (Roger Briggs' leela below is an excellent example of this point.)
  • really getting that one cannot find Eternal, unconditional love in human friends and family, only in the Divine Person. (Adi Da's talk, Identification of the Beloved, is an excellent resource for this point.)
  • really getting the lesson of life: that you cannot become happy, you can only be (already) Happy. All efforts to arrange circumstances in such a way that you "become happy" are at best temporary and limited, with one's own mortality being the ultimate limit that makes all arrangements temporary.
  • really getting that the process of self-transcendence (essential to God-Realization) is going to involve a lot of tapas (heat), and is not going to be turned into just a "bliss ride" or "the Way of Fun" because of Adi Da's Transmission.
 
Lived By The Divine

Lived By The Divine Roger Briggs tells the story of a profound ordeal he went through, and the growth in practice required to come out the other end of that ordeal.

   
 


2. Lessons About Egoic Patterning

The entire Way of Adidam is about ego-transcendence: transcendence of egoic patterning. However, Adi Da has singled out certain certain key forms of egoic patterning worthy of special attention. These include: oedipal patterning; character type (solid, peculiar, vital); and self-pity, negativity, and self-imagery.

Oedipal / emotional-sexual patterning. Early in the twentieth century, Freud observed that emotional-sexual conflicts originate in the “oedipal” dynamic between children and their parents. He saw that one's sexual impulses, which are present even in early childhood (especially in relation to one's parents), are at the root of various emotional patterns and psychological problems. There can be no basic emotional ease or equanimity in human life until individuals achieve at least a personal resolution to this conflict, and mastery of their oedipal patterning. Adi Da has observed that such self-understanding is an essential part of the foundation of human maturation upon which genuine spiritual growth must be based:


Freud wanted to bring his own emotional-sexual tendencies under the control of the social ego. Thus Freud suppressed himself — because he saw that the un-mastered emotional-sexual ego is wild and powerful. That suppressive disposition (or "point of view") is not a workable basis for Spiritual life.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"My Word To All Who Would Find Heart-Breaking Freedom"
p. 25, The Complete Yoga of Human Emotional-Sexual Life

I Call My devotees to the transcending of any obstruction of energy, any dramatization of the “self”-contraction in relation to sex or any other aspect of life. I do not have a moralistic reaction to anything about the emotional-sexual life of human beings. To Me, emotional-sexual difficulty (of whatever kind) is simply a sign of egoity in whomever it appears — and, therefore, it is simply something that the individual must deal with in a straightforward, non-problematic, non-puritanical, and, altogether, non-paranoid (or fearless) manner. (Ibid, pp. 25-26)

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Chapter 17, The Gnosticon

I Am the One Who has made it possible for human beings to totally comprehend the emotional-sexual dimension of existence, and to completely transcend egoic reactivity, and to truly grow beyond the ordinary emotional-sexual limitations that the "worldly" mind represents, and (by all of this) to have an altogether — and in Reality — sane life.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, Always Enact Fidelity To Me


Adi Da also pointed out that the Guru-devotee relationship itself tends to be impacted by the devotee's oedipal patterning. Women devotees tended to approach Adi Da (and, indeed, all men) as "daddy" or "lover", often rejecting and betraying others, including their intimates, for access to Him. Meanwhile, men tended to approach Adi Da (and all male "others") — not only as "daddy", but as "rival" and "opponent" — competing (in the case of Adi Da) for victory over Him in all the games of life. So understanding and transcending one's oedipal patterning is essential to growth in the relationship with Adi Da Samraj, and the Spiritual Realization associated with that growth.

Primary cultural resources on oedipal patterning are the books, Always Enact Fidelity To Me and The Complete Yoga of Human Emotional-Sexual Life.

   
An Early Oedipal Consideration
An Early Oedipal Consideration Aniello Panico tells the story of how Adi Da led Aniello through a consideration of his oedipal patterning — specifically, his relationship with his father. He describes the present-time understanding of (and even release from) patterning that can occur when the oedipal consideration is done properly.
   
         
   

The Call To Be Love (And To Live As Love In All Relations)Michael Costabile's article about the ordeal necessary to earn emotional-sexual self-understanding. Includes stories from Frank Marrero (about knowing how to have sex, but not how to love), Katsu (about having a body-negative, sex-negative, fearful, and self-suppressed point of view), and Eileen McCarthy (how, as an emotional-sexual being, she was self-suppressed and hidden), where each devotee describes how Adi Da gifted them with self-understanding in these areas.


Michael Costabile
   
         
   
The Bright Master of Peace
The Bright Master of Peace Alaya Gernon tells of travelling to and attending a retreat at The Mountain Of Attention, and the many Graceful Revelations given to her by Adi Da along the way. In particular, she was gifted with an understanding about her oedipal conflict with her father (originating in an abusive childhood) that was getting in the way of allowing Adi Da to be her Guru and Master her.
   


Character type: solid, peculiar, vital. Avatar Adi Da has observed that everyone is crippled in the dimension of feeling. And He went on to point out that there are three characteristic ways whereby human beings strategically fail to feel (or actively avoid relationship) by resorting instead to the exaggerations of either the gross physical, the emotional, or the mental possibilities that the body-mind affords. Adi Da Samraj calls these strategies, respectively, "vital", "peculiar", and "solid". Studying these character strategies and discovering ourselves in them is a key part of the process of self-understanding as well as a compassionate understanding of others in the Way of Adidam.

The vital person is obsessed with submission to the energy, or vital force, of bodily life. The vital person exploits or yields to the physically oriented power and desires of the vital being, the navel. When his or her “moon” is full, the vital person may be hyperactive, gleeful, negative, violent, self-conscious, obsessed, and self -indulgent relative to food, sex, and casual speech. He or she communicates these qualities with force, from the navel. There is no true humor in the vital person—only irony or hysteria or vulgar enthusiasm. The vital person becomes completely absorbed in the aspect of his or her vital life that happens to be presently in phase. As his or her moon phases, the vital person may even take on apparent qualities of solidity and peculiarity, but they are only a play in him or her that further demonstrates the underlying power of his or her fixed vital strategy.

The peculiar person is one whose principal focus of attention and dramatization is the emotional-sexual being. Such a one tends to physical weakness, alienation from gross functions and requirements of life, and sympathy with egoic satisfactions in emotional and even psychic forms. The peculiar person may reflect the apparently “higher” and aesthetic range of emotional life, and he or she may exhibit interests and tendencies in myst ical and Yogic developments of experience. The peculiar person is, thus, in his or her negative reaction to the gros s physical, tending to project himself or herself into the more ascended or ascending ranges of experience, which move toward or are epitomized in psychic and psychological dimensions of a subtle, subconscious, or dreamlike variety.

The solid person is one in whom the verbal-mental, or willful and conceptual, functions are the focus of life and attention. Thus, the solid person stands on or chronically controls the emotional, sexual, energetic, and gross physical dimensions of his or her being with complex mental structures that rigidify his or her psyche. Such a one chronically assumes the position of the verbal mind in the midst of the descending and ascending pattern of life. He or she is usually willful, and through force subdues and controls the pervasive influence of emotion, sex, and physical experience. The solid person phases from absolute rigidity (unreceptive and uncreative) to varying degrees of emotional and physical sympathy. He or she feels excessively vulnerable to emotions and threatened by all demands on his or her feeling and psychic being, including pain, pleasure, and mortality, a nd so the solid person generally tends toward a rigid, verbal-mental, and self-conscious pattern of self-presentation. The solid person’s principal reaction is to the energetic, psychic, and emotional-sexual dimension of his or her being. The solid person tends to be constitutionally stronger in the physical than the peculiar person, but he or she also tends to be neglectful of the physical.

The three character types are not mutually exclusive. A given person's character type might be best explained by one, two, or all three of these strategies.

Primary cultural resources on character type are the book, The Eating Gorilla Comes in Peace (particularly Chapter 5: The Imbalancing Act) and The Dawn Horse Testament.


   
"Try the Suppository" — Much of the Work Adi Da does with His devotees involves their emotional character alone (without involving their sexuality). Da-vid Forysthe's story is a beautiful illustration of how Adi Da works with some common male character liabilities — a particular form of the "solid" character type — that negatively impact Spiritual growth.

Da-vid Forsythe
   


Rudi's trifecta: self-pity, negativity, and self-imagery. When Adi Da was a student of Swami Rudrananda ("Rudi"), He said Rudi used to repeatedly stress the profoundly negative impact of self-pity on spiritual practice:


So the religious life involves sadhana, practice, purification, transcendence, ultimately self-transcendence, ego-transcendence, or transcendence of the separate self-presumption. But also the transcendence of negativity. Rudi used to say, on occasion, there are three things to deal with: self-imagery, negativity, and self-pity. And they're all really variations on the same thing, you see? I talk to you in terms of such dispositions. . .

It requires profound practice to overcome these adaptations — not only identification with the body-mind itself, but everything that comes about as a result of that: all this negativity, this suffering, and pain, psychological pain, emotional disturbance, and so forth. These are all signs of contraction, self-contraction, the effect of it being that the inherent Nature of Reality, Which is Radiant Love-Bliss, Self-Existing, Self-Radiant, is apparently an experience lost. You feel Lightless, un-Enlightened, tending toward un-Consciousness, and identified with all kinds of limitations that you don't enjoy. Sometimes you enjoy them. Most of the time experience is mixed, with a lot of negative associations one way or another.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, "The Condition of Radiance"
The Brightening Way Talk Series, January 3, 1996



 
"No Pity For Him!" Chris Tong describes how, one night in December, 1992, Adi Da Gracefully and permanently relieved him of all self-pity. Chris talks about the lessons learned from this miraculous, karma-dissolving Gift. In particular, it allowed him to see that our modern Western culture is largely a culture of weakness, which tends to undermine the strength each of us must cultivate, in order to fully engage the practice of the Way of Adidam.
"No Pity For Him!"
   


3. Lessons About the Functional, Practical, and Relational Disciplines

These disciplines include: diet; health and radical healing; conscious exercise; sexuality; money and service; and cooperative community.

The primary cultural resource on the functional, practical, and relational disciplines is the book, Right Life Is Free Participation In Unlimited Radiance (particularly "Part Five: The Functional, Practical, Relational, and Cultural Disciplines of The Reality-Way of Adidam").

Diet. Diet is of fundamental importance to practice of the Way of Adidam. Our diet has a profound effect on our overall health, level of energy, general state of well-being, and free attention. Avatar Adi Da has frequently remarked that a good deal of what is troubling individuals — including in the emotional dimension — could be corrected simply by a change in eating habits. Previous to His Divine Re-Awakening, Avatar Adi Da Himself experimented with diet and read many books on the subject, with the intention of discovering the most supportive dietary regime for spiritual practice. During the years of His Teaching Work, He developed this Consideration to its conclusion.

Among all the functional, practical, relational, and cultural disciplines that serve the practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam, the conservative discipline (or control) of diet is (elementally) the most basic — because dietary practice (which controls, or largely determines, the state of the food-body, or the state and general activity of the physical body) also determines the relative controllability of social, sexual, emotional, mental, and all other functional desires and activities.

The right and optimum diet is (necessarily) a conservative diet. In right (or effective) practice of the Reality-Way of Adidam, dietary discipline fully serves the submission of personal energy and attention to the Great Process that becomes (Ultimately, by Means of My Divine Avataric Transcendental Spiritual Grace) Most Perfect Divine Self-Realization.

Adidam, the right and optimum diet must be intelligently moderated in its quantity and carefully selected in its quality, so that it will not burden the physical body or bind the mind (or attention) through food-desire and negative (or constipating, toxifying, and enervating) food-effects (and ingestion-effects in general), and so that (along with the necessary additional "consideration" and really effective transcending of addicted, aberrated, anxious, or even excessively private habits and patterns relative to food-taking and waste-elimination) it serves the yielding (or freeing) of functional human energy and attention to the great (and, necessarily, devotionally Me-recognizing and devotionally to-Me-responding) process of the intrinsic and fully life-effective transcending of the ego-"I".

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"The Right and Optimum Diet Is a Conservative Diet", The Aletheon

The primary cultural resources for diet in the Way of Adidam are Green Gorilla and Right Life Is Free Participation In Unlimited Radiance (particularly the section of "Part Five: The Functional, Practical, Relational, and Cultural Disciplines of The Reality-Way of Adidam" on diet).

 
A Fasting Success Story

A Fasting Success Story — Interrupting the daily dietary regimen with an extended fast is a part of the dietary practice of Adidam. Frank Marrero recently completed an eleven-day fast. He felt it was so successful in terms of balance, energy, cleansing, and ease, that he wanted to share the details. As Frank puts it: "Being a regular faster for 43 years, the nuances here are long-considered and hard-won, and perhaps useful to others (personalized though they may be)."

   


4. Lessons About the Cultural Practices


Only a sacred culture gives human beings the potential to live a life ecstatically dedicated to existence in Truth. . . . [The cultural practices of Adidam] are the means that enable [Adi Da's] devotees to find Him as the Divine Eternal Source of Reality Itself and to participate in the Sacred Space of That Reality.

Ruchiradama Quandra Sukhapur Rani Naitauba

The cultural practices in the Way of Adidam include: Darshan; meditation; Name invocation; puja; devotional chanting; the Sacrament of Universal Sacrifice; studying and listening to Adi Da's Word; Beholding Adi Da's Image-Art; telling leelas about Adi Da; visiting and making right use of the Adidam Empowered Sanctuaries, Holy Sites, and Communion Halls; the Devotional Prayer of Changes; the culture of inspiration and expectation; and practice consideration groups.

A primary cultural resource on cultural practices in Adidam is the book, The Sacred Space Of Finding Me.

Devotional chanting. The practice of devotional chanting to Avatar Adi Da is a powerful means for serving the connection with Him and the magnification of devotion to Him. Like all the other forms of whole bodily engaged devotional activity, chanting serves the purpose of turning all the faculties of the body-mind (attention, feeling, body, and breath) to Adi Da Samraj, in a single heart-based gesture of devotional response.

   
Antonina Randazzo

Devotional Singing: "The Focus Is On The Divine" — Antonina Randazzo describes how Adi Da taught her the sacred art of devotional singing.

   


Visiting and making right use of the Adidam Empowered Sanctuaries, Holy Sites, and Communion Halls. Traditionally, Spiritual Masters have been provided with places that were set apart — geographically, psychically, and socially — from the conventional world, places where they were free to do their Spiritual Work in an appropriate and secluded circumstance. These places became Spiritually Empowered through their Presence and Work, and — as a result — continued to Spiritually Transmit the Blessing of the Spiritual Master beyond His or Her human lifetime. Avatar Adi Da has established and spiritually empowered five Sanctuaries for all time. There is nothing like visiting the holy places He established (short of having come into Adi Da's physical company during His lifetime) because He installed Himself there Spiritually for all time, and His Presence pervades the physical space, because of His Eternal connection to it.

   
Antonina Randazzo

Visiting the Empowered Sanctuaries — I'm not a devotee, but I'm very interested in Adi Da and the Way of Adidam. Can I visit any of the Empowered Sanctuaries?

   
         
   
Ripples in the Deep of Feeling — Bill Somers: "Sitting in the Silver Hall is the most extraordinary circumstance I have experienced in this life. To be with Avatar Adi Da in that concentrated pure place is to leave the world and be immersed in His Divine Transcendental Spiritual Presence." . .
Bill Somers
   


The Devotional Prayer of Changes. The Devotional Prayer of Changes is a practice given by Adi Da Samraj of prayerful Communion with Him for the sake of positive change in life-circumstances and the world.


Your responsibility does not depend on your "creature"-power or ego-power. It depends on your participation in Me, and on your engaging in the practices that establish your own mechanism as the means for the very same things you are presently calling on Me to Do by what may look to you to be My Personal Intention.

This is another characteristic of My Sign and My Demonstration of My Divine Indifference. I have Shown you how to do everything. Now your Devotional Prayer of Changes becomes effective because you use My Virtue, through your practice of whole bodily devotional turning to Me, and through your taking your responsibilities seriously rather than imagining that they are only mysterious obligations that have nothing to do with you. You are drawing on My Virtue simply by practicing the Devotional Prayer of Changes, or true whole bodily devotional turning to Me. You allow your own mechanism to become the means.

My devotees are to provide the body-minds whereby My Virtue becomes Effective. If you will really do so, then changes will occur. Yes, they will be changes that I have Made, but in the fashion I have just Described to you.

So it will be forever. That My devotees have received the Secret of whole bodily devotional turning to Me allows My Divine Translation. It allows Me to be Effective forever throughout the cosmic domain. My Virtue Changes things and Enlightens beings, and It Works, because My devotees assume their responsibilities by embracing the practices I have Given them, doing those practices for real, and using My Virtue.

When the time comes that This Body dies, I will not disappear. I will be wholly Available to you. I will be Effective forever — Fully Conscious, Self-Radiant, never gone, never separate.

In devotional Communion with Me, you associate with, participate in, and draw upon My Own Virtue. That is the Secret of devotional Communion with Me. It has always been the case, but you did not know the Secret. I have Come to Reveal That Secret and to Establish the Fullest Instruction. By your devotional recognition-response to Me, you give Me the Mechanism to Do the same kind of Work I have been Doing in My bodily (human) Lifetime here. I will be Incarnated countlessly by Means of this Process.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj
"I Will Be Incarnated Countlessly Through My Devotees", Ishta


Adi Da contrasts the Devotional Prayer of Changes — which is based on present-time Communion with the Divine (and the Virtue that flows from that) with conventional prayer — which is based on separation from the Divine and the presumption that the Divine is a Great Other whom one can approach like a parent for favors and blessings.

The stories below are about a particular form of the Devotional Prayer of Changes: the Adidam Prosperity Puja. "Puja" means sacramental worship and invocation of the Divine in a bodily active manner (in contrast with, say, meditation). In an Adidam Prosperity Puja, participating devotees engage in a powerful, collective form of the Devotional Prayer of Changes and sacramental worship of Adi Da. It is a time when the participants invoke Adi Da's Divine, All-Accomplishing Power and specifically visualize abundance and growth and relinquish all presumed limitations to prosperity.

 
Handled!

Handled! — For one devotee from New Zealand, overcoming her own resistance to participating in the Prosperity Puja led to the Graceful overcoming of seemingly insurmountable obstacles, and the fulfillment of her heart's desire to be with Adi Da at The Mountain Of Attention.

   
         
   
The Transformation of My Relationship to Money and Energy — A devotee describes her participation in the very first Prosperity Puja at The Mountain Of Attention in 1979, and how it completely transformed her.

The Transformation of
My Relationship to Money and Energy
   
         
 
Handled!

Showered with Challenging Blessings — Participating in a Prosperity Puja always links the devotee with Adi Da's Divine Blessing Power. At times, that Blessing can take challenging forms, and in this story, an Australian devotee describes how she learned to cooperate with the labor pains associated with a spiritual rebirth in her relationship to money and business.

   
         
   
Within 30 Days. . . — After being downsized out of a job the previous year, a devotee participated in her first Prosperity Puja. Within 30 days, her life was completely different.

Within 30 Days. . .
   
         
   
From "Dead-In-The-Water" to Alive, by Grace

From "Dead-In-The-Water" to Alive, By Grace Charles Syrett tells the story of how his invoking Adi Da's Grace through the Devotional Prayer of Changes and participating in a Prosperity Puja resurrected a 'dead-in-the-water' business opportunity, the very morning after the Prosperity Puja took place.

   


Practice consideration groups. (Aka devotional groups.) Practitioners of the Way of Adidam are aided in their practice by belonging to a practice consideration group. A practice consideration group is a key element of the culture of Adidam. Its primary purposes are to provide occasions for collective devotional invocation of Adi Da, and to help each other grow in ego-transcending practice. Through time and intimacy, members of a practice consideration group get to know each other well, and therefore, get to know each other's egoic patterning as well. Group members are thus in a unique position to serve each other's practice, by seeing things a particular member might not see about himself or herself, by helping members take on disciplines that cut into their particular egoic patterns, and by helping members stay accountable for fulfilling and persisting in the counter-egoic disciplines they take on. Such reflection and disciplining of egoic patterning is essential for growth in practice of the ego-transcending Way of Adidam.

A primary cultural resource on practice consideration groups is Adi Da's talk, "When the Tiger Disappears".

   
The Artfulness of Helping Others Take Up the Disciplines The Artfulness of Helping Others Take Up (and Persist in) DisciplinesChris Tong: When one becomes a devotee, one is, in effect, also "hiring" Adi Da to provide the Revelation, Blessing-Force, and wisdom for how and what to practice, in order to Realize the Divine; and "hiring" the culture of devotees to help one practice. At its best, the culture of devotees can be an enormous help in one's practice, and what Adi Da would call "good company". At its worst (through ignorance or immaturity), one's fellow devotees can be "bad company", and actually impede one's growth in practice. While we could write an entire book about the art involved in being a cultural server of one kind or another, we will just mention a few points here, in passing, to give you a sense for the issues involved.
   


Quotations from and/or photographs of Avatar Adi Da Samraj used by permission of the copyright owner:
© Copyrighted materials used with the permission of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as trustee for The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam. All rights reserved. None of these materials may be disseminated or otherwise used for any non-personal purpose without the prior agreement of the copyright owner. ADIDAM is a trademark of The Avataric Samrajya of Adidam Pty Ltd, as Trustee for the Avataric Samrajya of Adidam.

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