The Purpose of Disciplines
in the Way of Adidam

The first thing to say about disciplines in the Way of Adidam: growth in the Way of Adidam is completely voluntary. (Click here for more about this.) For example, if you find yourself resisting the dietary discipline: while Adi Da Gives us guidelines for how long it should take to adapt to the recommended diet (less than a year), in fact, He has said some people may take their entire lives adapting to it (and to the disciplines in general). He doesn't recommend taking a lifetime, but He does acknowledge that that may be the way it turns out for many devotees. It's like giving up smoking: you know it's good for you, but when you'll actually do it and whether it will last remains to be seen. The habits of a lifetime are not always easy to change (though sometimes Grace facilitates).

The Purpose of Adidam is Spiritual Realization and Realization Requires Discipline

That having been said, Adidam is not a "social club", purposed toward being "a vibrant and active community". (That is a nice, secondary feature, but it's not really the point of Adidam.)

Also, Adidam is not a "conventional church", where the members (or the church itself) move to change the rules over time, to "keep up with the times" — like Catholics currently asking the Pope to drop the restrictions on birth control; or, for that matter, the earlier introduction of said restrictions on birth control by the Church two millenia after Jesus' lifetime, when birth control technologies became available in the twentieth century.

Adidam is simply and solely for those who want Spiritual Realization. Is that what you want? Then: You get what you pay for! No "pain" (counter-egoic behavior) no gain (self-transcendence). One must understand that the disciplines in Adidam are as necessary for Realization as exerting oneself is necessary to climb to the top of a mountain. You can say, I don't like exerting myself, and go for easy flat terrain walks around the base of the mountain — maybe having fun, "vibrant" times with a lot of others sharing that same "beginner's walk"; but you'll never get to the top of the mountain without climbing.

If you want to win an Oympic medal, you know that you'll never do so without having a coach, and without allowing him or her to completely manage your time and push you to your absolute limits. If you don't allow that, you just are not going to win that medal! No one ever has won without a coach, and a fierce discipline that they willingly engaged.

If you are diagnosed with cancer, you can't really say, "well I don't like the pain of chemotherapy — and you'd have a lot more people signing up for chemo if it weren't so painful." With death knocking at your door, you don't have the luxury to talk about your personal preferences! You don't get to choose. Chemotherapy (at least in its currently available form) just is unpleasant. If no other cure alternative is available, you either surrender your resistance to chemotherapy, or die.

Just so, the laws of Spiritual Realization can't be changed, simply because people raised in our twenty-first century Western materialistic culture are programmed to not like demands, to avoid self-discipline, to rebel against authority, to resist the notion of being mastered, etc. The laws of Spiritual Realization are what they are — and either you conform yourself to them, or you don't Realize. All changing social patterns can do is incline us — or disincline us — to our Greatest Destiny. So those of us born in a materialistic world, but who want Spiritual Realization, are playing with a deck that is stacked against us.

The Purpose of Disciplines in the Way of Adidam

As Adi Da once put it:

Spiritual Realization is, in part, a matter of freeing up enough energy and attention that one can "see" what is always already the case — but which normally one fails to notice because one's attention and energy are being sidetracked endlessly by one's preoccupations with (and addictions to) money, food, sex, etc. Disciplines force Narcissus to lift his head from the pool of his preoccupations, and look up.

Some people beginning to explore spiritual alternatives get entranced by language such as "The Truth is always already the case" and the suggestion that we're "simply" failing to notice what already is the case. It suggests to them a kind of "quick win", "no work" approach to Enlightement. The logic goes something like this:

Adi Da has strongly criticized that approach (which He labels, the "Talking School approach"), because:

• it confuses a concept with a Realization, and you need to meditate on the Realization Itself, not a concept of it, in order to Realize;
  
  
• it fails to take into account the reality of lifetimes of egoic habits and addictions, which are powerfully obscuring the Truth to a very profound degree in the usual egoic life, moment to moment. This really is so! Here's an easy way to see that: the moment we stop distracting ourselves, we begin to feel boredom, discomfort, and doubt, and we feel compelled to instantly begin distracting ourselves again. Spiritual Realization lies in the other direction. This endless distraction and obscuring of the Truth needs to be cut into (via disciplines), in order to see what is always already the case.
  
  

  Spiritual maturity is founded on the conservative equanimity of the body-mind-"self", and its principal evidence is a profound availability of free energy and attention (released from automatic involvement in the conditional states and "objects" of the body-mind-"self" when natural equanimity is fully and stably realized). Thus, when the Way has been practiced to the point of true Spiritual maturity, energy and attention are free to Realize their Source, Identity, and Condition. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, October 8, 1981, I Is the Body of Life

For more on the purpose of disciplines in the Way of Adidam, click here.

What is Your Intention?

Adi Da has created four congregations within Adidam. The practice of the First Congregation is the most intensive. The practice of the Second Congregation is less intensive. And the practice of the Third Congregation is a kind of "warm-up exercise", in preparation for taking up one of the more intensive forms of practice down the line. As described in the Third Congregation vow of practice:

So Adi Da provides a means for accomodating egoic resistance to practice, that allows people to nonetheless be able to associate with True Wisdom, and a Revelatory Spiritual Source. The idea is that, over time, the Grace of that auspicious Association can help cut into one's egoic resistance, and move one to take on the greater practice, for the sake of one's Realization.

Obviously a key issue here is what a person actually wants: what the purpose of one's life is. So you have to consider: Do you really want Realization? Are you willing to pay the "price" for it, then? If you just want to be a member of a religious social group (that has interesting discussions about Spiritual Realization), that's not the purpose of Adidam, and you should look elsewhere.

Adi Da has a wonderful talk, "What Is Your Intention?" that gets into this self-examination in some depth, and determining how much is serious and how much is romantic fantasy.

"No struggling" is the practice; but if you must, struggle with self, not Guru or community

In a real sense, becoming a devotee involves "hiring" the Guru and a culture of fellow devotees to help one achieve one's own goal of Spiritual Realization. The "expectations" to which the questioner refers should, in principle, simply mirror one's own expectations for oneself, and engender gratitude for the help such "expectations" represent. We are not alone in the difficult challenge of self-transcendence — what a relief! We have good company in the form of our fellow devotees, who, through their "expectations", are helping us get through this or that moment of weakness or crisis where, by ourselves, we would tend to slide. (Obviously there is equally a responsibility on the part of one's fellow devotees to actually help us in a loving and inspirational manner, and not just "lay into us" in the manner of a "control number" or "power trip". This is why Adi Da describes our culture as "a culture of inspiration and expectation", with "inspiration" listed first.)

So, as Adi Da puts it, the process of self-transcendence is engaged voluntarily, and the heat of self-transcendence should not engender a struggle with others or with one's Guru, but a struggle with self (and a gratitude for the help of others). Eventually, with maturity, even the "struggle" with self relaxes, as one simply surrenders the faculties of the body-mind to Beloved Adi Da, and ceases to put one's attention on the "heat" generated by practice.

Whether we are capable of not struggling with (or blaming) others in the process of self-transcendence is dependent on our human maturity: it requires maturity in the first three stages of life. But, as Adi Da points out, most people (all of us) raised in Western society are trained by that society to be adolescents, not fully mature adults. We are trained to be undisciplined, to cultivate weakness (through endless complaining and reacting) rather than cultivate strength, and taught to blame others when the going gets tough, rather than transcend ourselves and our own reactivity:

The Revelation that is the Primary Prerequisite for Becoming a Devotee

The final and paramount point then, even beyond one's own intention and seriousness, is that the Way of Adidam cannot and should not be taken up — one should not become a devotee — unless and until one receives the Spiritual Revelation that makes practice (and the vow of practice) both possible and attractive. This is what Adi Da means when He says, "Come to Me when you are already Happy": become His devotee only after you have received this Revelation of Who He is (the human incarnation of the Divine Person), and of what the Realization associated with the Way of Adidam is (Perfect, Eternal Happiness) — that's when you get that the discipline's purpose are to help restore you to that Happy Revelation, again and again.

For more about this Revelation, click here.