FAQs about Adi Da & Adidam > Taking Up the Way of Adidam > Life-Positive

The Life-Positive Way of Adidam

Question: What exactly does Adi Da mean when He describes the Way of Adidam as "life-positive"?

[Quotes from Beloved on "life-positive"]

What "life-positive" means

• a critique of all the ascetical traditions. “The Way of Adidam is not about strategic dissociation from the body-mind as a technique, but (rather) surrender as the body-mind…” —Avatar Adi Da Samraj.
  
  
• a critique of sex negativity.
  http://www.dabase.org/4PrinIntr.htm
  Adi Da points out "that sex-negativity is the primary life-negative message that children get. His "Life-positive, body-positive, sex-positive, Happiness-positive, and in every sense positive" ("Our Defense of the Body in God", The Lesson, Vol. 4, p. 211.) message educates us in the free acceptance of each child's bodily pleasure and native urge to ecstasy.
  https://www.adidaupclose.org/Crazy_Wisdom/openletter.html
  
  
• a critique of the usual threatened life
  http://www.frankmarrero.com/DA/2PrimaryPrinciples.html
  Instead of playfully allowing them to become motivated to play out the games of threat and fear that they encounter in conventional stories, orient them to a Life-positive understanding and Practice. We must try to teach children to live a happy and positive way of life through all their functions. Children generally communicate and dramatize that they feel threatened. They typically rehearse their future adult consciousness by identifying with threatened personalities. We must teach them to dramatize an unthreatened consciousness instead.
  
  
• not dissociation from the body or "good behavior"
  
  

  The by-Me-Given foundation disciplines of the Reality-Way of Adidam are not ascetical. They are not at all a matter of dissociating from the body-mind-"self" or of disconnecting the body-mind-"self" from its environment of participation. Rather, the by-Me-Given foundation disciplines are entirely life-positive-and entirely a matter of establishing the right (and necessary) equanimity of the whole body (or the total psycho-physical complex of the individual being) through disciplines of basic right life (understood not in moralistic, or puritanical, or merely behavioral terms, but understood in Spiritual, Transcendental, and Divine terms). These by-Me-Given foundation disciplines are, most fundamentally, a matter of participating in devotional and (in due course) Transcendental Spiritual Communion with Me, by bringing the body-mind-"self" into the Condition (and Disposition) of Utter Non-separation. It is profoundly important that My devotees understand that practice of the by-Me-Given foundation disciplines of the Reality-Way of Adidam is not a matter of being "good little boys and girls". Right practice of the by-Me-Given foundation disciplines of the Reality-Way of Adidam is simply the living of right life, through the establishment of participatory equanimity, for the sake of devotional and (in due course) Transcendental Spiritual Communion with Me (and, Ultimately, Most Perfect Realization of Me)-not in the mode of a seeker, but in the mode of a non-contracted participant. http://www.beezone.com/AdiDa/Aletheon/necessary_foundations_right_life.html

  
  
• The life-positive practices of diet, conscious exercise, regenerative sexuality, service, and cooperative culture
  http://www.adidam.org/global_ashram/laughing-man-institute/AdidamCourse.html
  

• Sexual Practices. Adi Da teaches that sex is entirely "life positive." Sexual practices which are learned and used by the group are intended to fulfill this "life-positive" quality. Characterized as Sexual Yoga, there are two stages: (1) the sexual "conscious exercise" and (2) the advanced and ultimate stage of "sexual communion." In this yogic practice, the conventional orgasm is bypassed because it is believed to cause a loss of life-energy and vital chemistry of the body. In this way, sex is supposed to become "an intensely pleasurable and regenerative whole body form of orgasm," rather than depleting the body of energy. The ability to conduct sexual energy, rather than suppress or indulge in it, is essential and allows one to increase the flow of energy through the body.
  
  fully life-positive single celibacy
  http://www.lmicourses.org/mod/page/view.php?id=21
  

What "life-positive does not mean

• Self-indulgence -- The single most common misinterpretation of Adi Da's phrase, "life-positive", is as sanctioning a life of self-indulgence, particularly in the areas of money, food, and sex. The Realm of the Senses. Devotion to "ragged pleasure" -- yes, but to the Divine Degree. Common Western misinterpretation of Tantra is similar. (Through suffering comes wisdom. Pleasure Dome considerations.)
  
  
• In principle, a Way of Divine Realization is compatible with relationships, sex, etc. But whether it is actually compatible in practice depends on the individual and what they are doing with these.
  
  
• The Way of Adidam is based on two sensitivities: that things don't work out here (in conditional reality); that the Unconditional Reality does exist, is being Revealed in every moment (by Adi Da), and can be Realized. "Life-positive" does not mean skipping off the second point. [continuity between ordinary life and Life -- to use the word with a capital L as Adi Da did in books like Enlightement of the Whole Body] Must be life-positive but self-transcending at the same time.
  http://www.beezone.com/politics_for_men_and_women.html
  In this "late-time" (or "dark" epoch), human beings do not, generally, assume cultural, social, and political freedom of right association, right commitment, and, altogether, right life—but they assume, instead, that they have to subordinate themselves to the ideas and the plans of power-seeking bureaucrats, benighted intellectuals, materialistic scientists, religious fundamentalists, and disturbed political revolutionaries—who (because they are mere egos, and yet bound to Spiritually un-Enlightened interpretations of human existence) work to effectively prevent the truly human politics of intimate, cooperative society. And this universal failure of right (and, necessarily, truly religious and Spiritual) life reflects (and results from) every human individual's frightened (and, altogether, egoic) suppression of the universal Unifying Life-Principle and of the life-positive vitality of Spiritually-Awakened bodily existence.
  
  
• Very important:
  http://www.adidam.org/teaching/essays-talks/sex-laughter-god-realization.pdf
  

References

• http://www.adidam.in/Life-Positive-Disciplines.asp
• http://www.adidam.org/adidam_ruchiradam/five_fundamentals/repatterning_your_life/
• http://www.amazon.com/Embrace-Life-Positive-Disciplines-Sexuality-Cooperative/dp/1570971463/
• https://www.adidaupclose.org/Money_and_Service/money_spiritual_legitimacy.html
• http://www.adidam.in/mfs.asp
• http://www.visionofmulund.org/articles.htm
  "Adults must be relaxed in their inspection of the qualities of children. They must communicate the life-positive message, the bodily, emotional feeling-expression of the Divine as Radiant Energy, felt via breathing. They must associate children with the sense of being Energy, of being the Mystery." —Avatar Adi Da Samraj from The Practice of Ecstasy with Children
• https://www.adidaupclose.org/Crazy_Wisdom/anthony8.html
  A certain pre-Adidam sense of "life-positive". Dramatization and indulgence are less mediocre than suppression.
• http://www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-July2006.pdf
  "Life is terrible, and human beings are deluded by the immediate pleasures that they can receive. . . . Everyone is just involved in the mummery of trying to make life positive." Life is only positive when it is in God at the same time, not in itself.
• www.adidamla.org/newsletters/newsletter-aprilmay2006.pdf

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