He Is the Heart, Infinite and Blissful

Daniela Morena

Daniela Morena has been a devotee of Adi Da since 1986. She has worn many hats and has done a 360 change twice in her career, living on three different continents. She currently heads Italian Sorrisi and teaches Italian language. She also facilitates using "The Coaching Game", a coaching tool for life and work solutions. Daniela lives in Singapore.

The human individual is primarily suffering from the obstruction of feeling. Avatar Adi Da Samraj, May 24, 1983 Feeling Without Limitation

I had been hoping and waiting to see Adi Da Samraj and be in His Company since 1982, and in March 1990, I was finally able to go on a meditation retreat to Adi Da Samrajashram. I was full of joy and trepidation.

As the retreat unfolded however, I felt permanently frozen and closed to His Transmission. I would complain that I just was not feeling anything at all! What I did feel, was a sense of great frustration.

One day, we had a Darshan occasion with Beloved Adi Da Samraj at Divine World-Teacher Mandir, a beautiful Fijian bure among the trees. The retreatants were conveyed there and back on an open trailer pulled by an old tractor. The Darshan had been incredibly intimate. I had sat in the first row and so very near to my Beloved Guru but I had felt nothing, and concluded that I was just not receiving His Transmission at all! My frustration with myself had now spilled into anger. The tractor was noisy, nature all around was luscious, the air was warm, the retreatants contemplative and silent.

Suddenly, I wasn't on the trailer any longer.

I found myself in a vast, dark blue, deep space. Like deep velvet. Peaceful. I seemed to be without my body. But I still had a clear sense of being me, and I was enjoying this new environment.

A sudden movement disturbed that peace and I found myself no longer in that space: I was now focused on the trees. In the next moment, I was back in the deep blue peace. Then I left it to follow a sound in the distance. I crossed the space back and forth this way a few times, unable to control "where" I was going. Then I realised what was happening: "I" was being drawn to "objects" away from the deep blue peace. As I started focusing on the movement itself, it appeared to take place in slow motion. It felt like an arrow. I identified it as being my attention.

I was now "riding" that movement and it became clear that I actually was that arrow, that both my attention and my sense of "I" were the same entity. That produced an amazing feeling of freedom, as I was no longer bound by my body. I had a new, much freer identity!

However, the arrow kept shooting out, apparently unstoppable. And that started to bother me.

I became curious: attention/me was shooting out of somewhere, so where might that be?

I retraced the course of the trajectory and, to my surprise, I felt a physical sensation in my own chest, on the right of my physical heart. This appeared to be the point of origin of my flights.

As I focused on the right side of the heart, I "saw" a space apparently very tiny, but also limitless, which looked extremely bright. Something in me instinctively recognised it as "the heart on the right", that Adi Da had often spoken about. And there I saw, to my utter amazement, my Beloved Guru, seated in all His Glory.

He was magnificent! He was Supremely Attractive. He was the Heart, Infinite and Blissful. The Heart was Home, The Place I never wanted to leave again.

But leave it I did. In the next moment, out shot the arrow again, and it travelled towards another “object”.

By this point, however, I had tasted the nectar of That Place. And as soon as I would notice having left It to move towards objects, a powerful longing for my Beloved Guru would fill me, that was overwhelming. And that longing would instantaneously and effortlessly draw me back to the Heart. It was a demonstration of the power of Divine Distraction.

The experience took place a few times, till I felt awed by the Mystery and simplicity of this practice. It was simply to return attention to Beloved Bhagavan Adi Da. It felt so natural to be doing "this" with my attention, the only thing worth doing with it, surely, as nothing else compared to this Beauty!

Eventually the “experience” faded and I found myself back in the body, on that trailer.

I was very, very much sobered and awed by what my Beloved Guru had revealed to this unprepared devotee.

Adi Da's Gift was so profound that it has taken me years to feel into it, process it and then be able to share this leela. That completely different way of "experiencing" reality is utterly subversive of my everyday point of view and has been a clear reminder (to turn to Him, and to make use of this Gift) in times of great distress and bewilderment.

For this, and for His many Gifts, I am truly grateful to my Beloved Guru.

For more stories from Daniela Morena, read "This Is Home!", Adi Da "Heard" My Thoughts, and The Divine Force That Brings an End To "me".