Finding
Adi Da > Chris Tong > Part IV (Waking Up) > B (Moving Beyond) > Chapter 2
2. "MORE! MORE!"
Beyond the Presumption of Unfruitful Practice
Where there is surrender, you feel Happy. This is fundamental Wisdom. Exploit it! Fulfill it Perfectly. Allow it to become what it can become when it is fully developed. Do not let it just be a little gentle sort of consoling sensation. Allow yourself to be completely surrendered, completely Radiant, completely Happy. Why not? Why should you choose to do otherwise?
Some of you are still beginners, not because you are not nice people or serious people, nor even because you are not practicing virtuous, worthy, and intelligent disciplines, but because you are in the position of the listener. That fundamental self-transcending insight has not achieved at least sufficient force in your case that you are practicing the Way sheerly on the basis of Self-Radiant Communion with the Living One, without seeking, free of neurosis. . .
I hope that most people, after some period of time at any rate, will discover that the consoling force of practicing as a beginner is not sufficient. Then they will become moved to use the very thing that has always been available to them in our community. It will suddenly become useful to them, suddenly become profoundly interesting to them, to a degree that mysteriously they did not comprehend before. And then their apparent progress will be quickened.
Most everyone will reach their cutoff point, the point where they will tend to stop, the point where practice tends to be sufficient for them or where further effort is too frustrating and too offensive. Everybody reaches the point where he or she tends to withdraw from the stream of practice. Most people reach that point even before they begin the practice. Either they are never moved to find anything greater than ordinary ego-fulfillment in the world, or they are just “fans” of spiritual life. They like the books, but they basically resist and even resent the interference represented by a Spiritual Master and a Teaching and the idea of practice.
The practice must occupy your entire life. You must devote your entire life to it. You must be devoted completely to it. Otherwise, being only superficially associated with it, you may perhaps realize a better life by virtue of your coming into my Company, but you will not fulfill the Way in your lifetime. Instead you will devote the Virtue of this Way, the Spiritual Transmission Awakened in my Company, to the ordinary purposes of your living, and fundamentally It will only grant Energy to the same thing you are already doing. Therefore, to the degree you are suffering, your suffering will be intensified. To the degree you are successful, your successes will be intensified. But you will never merely be successful. You will also become exaggerated and bastardize the Virtue that is given to you.
Practice in My Divine Avataric Company is about passing tests, such that the total body-mind constantly goes through ego-transcending changes and makes an always greater and always new ego-transcending demonstration.
The Practice accounts for the dual or dynamic nature of the body-mind, while it is also founded in the radical point of view of the Free soul. At every stage of the Way, right functional or whole bodily activity is the chosen principle, rather than any or all forms of exclusively subjective or internal and mental self-manipulation. The individual must change his action first, or else the contents of the mind, which are only a reflection of past actions, will not change. At every stage of the Way, the devotee is obliged to accept responsibility for a more and more total functional spectrum of action.
Two kinds of negative presumptions: "The practice doesn't work." And "The practice may work, but my practice just won't ever grow beyond my current plateau.
Two forms of doubt quote
I am always doing what I cannot do yet, in order to learn how to do it.
Monastary quote
MORE! is what the practice of Adidam is all about. In principle, it could be a simple, linear process, in which each devotee gets Brighter and Brighter, until Divine Enlightenment is the case:
My Place is a blessed afternoon of “Brightness” and pleasant air — everyone becoming “Brighter” and “Brighter”. That is your True Condition.
You are not looking toward heaven. You are presently, by means of your devotion to Me, establishing yourselves in My Kiln perpetually — already in the Holy Land, the Divine Place. Just invest yourself in It.
This Is Liberation — My Work. Your work is simply to get yourself into the Kiln with Me constantly. That is what all your responsibilities amount to. Do so, and enjoy this balmy afternoon with Me — forever! And, eventually — without sweat, without sunburn, without distress — the “Brightness” of the day will become so Profound that there will be no noticing but the Love-Bliss of Oneness with Me.
Do not look back. Do not make any measures.
Just get with it with Me.
You need not fear the disappearances.
There is no madness in This Kiln with Me.
And, then — without a wink, without even noticing — there will be only This “Brightness”.
It is not the heaven above, in spaces rising.
It Is simply the Very Condition — in Which “this” is appearing for the moment, it seems.
Soon forgotten — even now, if you practice true devotion to Me.
There is nothing but this balmy, bright afternoon — with a cool breeze, a pleasant sea, perfect weather.
Or sometimes early evening, then, or sunrise, sunset—these beauties of perfect coincidence.
So it is in My Kiln.
Invest yourself in My Kiln.
Get out of the karmic, samsaric vision through devotional Communion with Me.
Then, in the apparent meantime of the gross sufferings of the poor “pig”, you will be oblivious in this “Brightness” with Me, and you will have the right disposition to (so-called) “endure” the sufferings.
The sufferings will pass. Do not worry about it.
Be right.
Live in the Kiln-Disposition in relation to all beings, in relation to apparent changes in the body.
Just forget it.
Stay with Me.
And praise — no blame.
Invest yourself in True Love, True Happiness, True Freedom.
Come into this Perfect Coincidence with Me.
Join the Blissfulness of It and become full of praise, oblivious of “self” — going through this process in which night and day become Infinite “Brightness” of Love-Bliss, without differentiation, without harm, without suffering.
Always, and more and more profoundly, forget the “pig” and Remember Me.
Forget the presumed “room” surrounding the Kiln. Be only in the Kiln.
That is a good enough way of Summarizing the Way in My Company:
Established in My Kiln,
forgetting the “pig”,
you Remember Me —
and I Magnify My “Brightness”,
Drawing you into Utter Non-differentiated Love-Bliss.
That Is It!
That Is the Reality-Way of Adidam.
That Is the Work that I am Doing now and that I will always Do.
I need not, now or then, “take up” a position in the cosmic domain.
The cosmic domain is positioned in Me.
I will just Do this Work of Magnification.
It is up to all and everything and everyone to take up their seat with Me.
In actuality, many devotees have the experience of "going back to square one" on a regular basis — for some, even every day. They may start the day Brightened by meditation and puja. But then the absence of a moment-to-moment practice throughout the day dissipates the Brightness, and brings them back to square one the next morning.
The day that unfolds after you have gone to the Communion Hall in the early morning is not a vacation until nightfall when you go to the Communion Hall again. No. All the hours between the times when you go to the Communion Hall are the times of this same Yoga. You must do it persistently and artfully. Do not allow yourself the vacation of wandering into the content of the conditioned body-mind. The only thing it is going to show you is its conditioning, based on your egoic "self-possession" and denial of God. Your business is this Yoga, in the midst of your practice of it noticing this and that in order to apply a discipline of right life that is in conformity with Me, and in greater conformity with Me always.
We'll talk much more about moment-to-moment practice in the next chapter.
The other thing that consistently brings devotees back to square one is their largely unconscious breaking of the circle, every time they get a little Brighter.
Guruvara example
In order to not break the circle, we need to value not breaking the circle, and appreciate how it is keeping us from further growth in practice. In the context of considering what is requires to stably reside in the erheric dimension after death, Adi Da reflects on the importance of never breaking the circle:
[Stably residing in the erheric dimension] is not the Great Matter. But it is the first conclusion, the first manifestation of Yoga. And those who truly succeed at Yoga enjoy this capability. It is the first siddhi — to be steady in the etheric domain, which is the duplicate of this and immediately associated with it. And they remain long. That is why it is said there are so many masters. They are always available. They can always intervene. They can always be called upon. Those are the lowest level of masters because it is the first siddhi, the first capability of Yoga.
In this Way, that possibility exists also for those who only mature to that point. It is not the end of it at all. But it is an indication of the profundity of the Yogic process, whereby you become conformed to energy, the condition of energy, through this devotion to Me and through right "conductivity" — never breaking the circle, never allowing it to be obstructed mentally, emotionally, physically — never.
In addition to valuing not breaking the circle, we must become aware of -- and address -- the prinary obstacle to full conductivity in the circle: the vital shock in our belly.
Elaborate.
The Emergence of the Divine takes place in time and space, one body-mind at a time. The Divine State is already the Condition — the Prior Reality — of all of conditional existence. Recognition of Adi Da includes this tacit awareness of His Divine State as the Condition of all of conditional existence, and so the natural response of the body-mind to that recognition is to support, in every possible way, the Emergence of that Condition as the manifest condition of the entire body-mind in every moment. Because Happiness is your tacit Condition, "You always know, at this very moment, exactly what it would be to look, and feel, and be, and act completely Happy." ("The Bodily Location Of Happiness"). Now you are acting on that recognition, and making it be so.
This can happen in all kinds of sequences for different individuals. But it is a movement of expansion of the Divine in both time and space, as your body-mind. The Emergence of the Divine in time occurs through the practice becoming increasingly more moment-to-moment. And the Emergence of the Divine in space occurs through the practice becoming increasingly more whole body: both in terms of the parts of the body-mind (which are first turned to the Divine, then later fully saturated by and immersed in the Divine State), and the conductivity of the Divine in the full circle of the body-mind. That Emergence in space eventually exceeds (and expands beyond) the visible body-mind, including the larger spherical form of the body-mind, which serves as the place where we stand when we are in transition between the beginning practice and the Perfect Practice.
The practice I have Given you can be done by anyone. It does not make any difference who that person is, or what his or her history is, what his or her tendencies are — because the egoic person is not part of the equation of "radical" devotion to Me. Therefore, your history and your tendencies and your background make no difference whatsoever. "Radical" devotion to Me is a simplicity, a directness. It does not require any special capability in the individual, any special qualification. I Am the Qualification. You simply turn the faculties of the body-mind-complex to Me, and the purifying process happens. Remember to do this in every moment, and the purifying process is intensified. Remember your separate and separative "self", fall back, and you suffer your Little-ji, your bondage to your false "guru", who beats you over the head, who hates your Liberation, who is jealous of your relationship to Me, who is "self"-protected, who is a phony and a liar, who makes you feel bad but gives you a taste here and there, too — to make you feel a bit good, as if to suggest that, if you love your Little-ji, you will feel good.
There is no explanation or magical “technique” that will eliminate the necessity to endure the ordeal of profound practice.
Profound practice puts you in touch with the absurdities of your own bondage, and that can, at times, depress you, confuse you, make you feel that your practice is failing altogether, and that it is fruitless. And, in fact, that may be completely true.
You may come to a point, years from now, when you realize that everything you are doing now, and everything you will do between now and then, was completely fruitless and completely off. And you would still have to deal with it.
You would have to refresh your practice, learn the lesson, and get on with right practice, even if you did not find this out about yourself for another ten or twenty years. On the other hand, you could find this out about yourself right now, and save yourself a good ten or twenty years.
There is no freebie. There is a profound process required, profound devotion is required, really holding to My Feet is required, doing so in spite of all inclinations to the contrary, all the bullshit you tell yourself, all the bullshit everybody else tells you, all the bullshit of the “world”, all the possible diversions, distractions, fearful happenings, and all the rest of it.
Regardless of all of that, you turn to Me. If you are serious, this is what you do. And what does turning to Me do? It purifies the mind. The Power of My Person and Presence and Regard and Blessing and Grace will deal with the mind, without you “working on yourself”.
Simply by devotionally recognizing Me and devotionally responding to Me, be turned to Me at all times. . . This is your vow. Do whatever you have to do in order to be turned to Me.
First of all, it has to be important to you to do it, and, secondly, you are going to have to suffer the ordeal of turning the faculties of the ego-possessed body-mind to Me, with utterly “self”-surrendered devotion.
People think there is something about life that prevents them from practicing “radical” devotion to Me. But there is, in fact, nothing about life preventing you from practicing this devotion to Me.
Searchless Beholding of Me is a characteristic of those who, without struggling, are able, moment to moment, to be turned in all their faculties to Me. It is a moment to moment practice.
