When Adi Da would gather with His devotees on Naitauba in Hymns To Me, He often would make some part of the gathering be a dance gathering. For instance, He might start an evening by talking to to us extensively about some subject; but then He'd end the evening with a dance gathering. (And sometimes the entire gathering would be a dance gathering.) Our DJ, instructed by Adi Da, would choose upbeat, usually energetic pop songs, often ones whose lyrics were capable of being interpreted in terms of the Guru-devotee relationship — examples of some favorite, often replayed songs were Steve Winwood's Higher Love, Huey Lewis's The Power Of Love, and the Police's Every Breath You Take. Adi Da would sit in His chair at the center of one side of the hall, lovingly watching all His devotees ("Every breath you take, I'll be watching you"), and we'd be dancing to the music with each other in the rest of the room while we contemplated Him.

I sometimes would sit down next to His chair, and simply contemplate Him. It was so much easier to feel Him, and be in Divine Communion with Him like that! Of course, regardless of where His attention appeared to be, He was completely aware of my sitting there, but would often indulge my sitting there for a while. But sooner or later, He would turn to me, often with a smile, and then make a gesture with His right index finger pointed downward. He'd move it as though He were using it to stir a drink — He was using His finger to symbolize dancing, and He was instructing me to get back to it. And so I would, re-energized from having sat with Him.

The point of this story is that, in the practice of Adidam, we need to discover how to be in Divine Communion with Adi Da in every moment of the day, no matter what we are doing. And in this moment it was: how to dance and interact with other devotees, and still be in Divine Communion with Him.

The Secret is to always remain in devotional Communion with Me. You have different kinds of functions and obligations and all the rest of it. Therefore, you must live the practice of Adidam to such a degree that you are able to be in devotional Communion with Me no matter what you are doing — no matter what kind of activity, function, or whatever, is happening at the moment. Therefore, the complexities of right practice are about how you conform every kind of function and moment to devotional Communion with Me.

It is a simple thing that is always being done, but you are required to adapt to all different kinds of particularities. It is the particularities that make the simplicity seem complex. In this moment, you have some requirement to do something or other. You can either do that, just merely as it is, or you can have it be devotional Communion with Me, true service to Me. What do you have to do to your action in any moment to have it be true devotional service to Me, to have it be such Communion with Me? That is what you must “consider”. You must intelligently “consider” every detail, every aspect of your life, and decide what you must do relative to each kind of function, relationship, and all the rest of it, such that you are always transcending egoity, always devotionally Communing with Me.

That is another aspect of what I Intend to Communicate when I Say that you must, in the beginning, find out what it is to be Reality-intelligent. This is how to function intelligently: As a practitioner of Adidam, you must require every aspect of your life to be a form of devotional Communion with Me. That does not mean you stop doing everything and just stay in your room to Commune with Me. It is more complex than that — because, even if you did go and sit in your room, you would still be haunted by yourself. Therefore, you must do the practice of Adidam relative to all of the aspects of your life. You must practice with them. You must adapt everything to the Divine Process — not adapt the Divine to them, not subordinate the Divine to them, but subordinate all aspects of your life to the Divine.

By natural necessity, you are active in all kinds of ways. You must find out how each of those kinds of action can be true service to Me, devotional Communion with Me. How do you do it with work? How do you do it with lunch? How do you do it with sex? How do you do it with social relations? How do you do it with everything? This is what I have “Considered” with people since I first began to Teach.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, My "Bright" Sight

You live all the time as if you are somehow under the worst of circumstances. You will not allow yourself to release the “self”-contraction and enter into Divine Communion, whole bodily, because you are aware that there are circumstances under which you would not be able to do so. You must discover that there is no circumstance under which you are incapable of entering into Divine Communion. Whatever you must do in order to get to that point of certainty is what you must do. Everyone must do that. It is not necessary to suffer mightily in order to discover this. But you must be able to somehow get in touch with your psychological limits. You must be tested.

Avatar Adi Da Samraj, My "Bright" Sight


Practice While Sleeping Reduces self-Contraction. Moment-to-moment" practice means twenty-four hours a day! So what about when one is sleeping?

I realized this was a serious matter when my daytime practice had become much closer to a moment-to-moment practice. But every now and then, I'd wake up in the morning completely contracted, because of all that sleep time when I was not practicing — and the contrast between the daytime state, largely free of contraction, and this wake-up state was startling. It wasn't bad every morning. As Adi Da has observed (as we mentioned in the chapter on the self-contraction), the self-contraction has a natural cycle or rhythm. But when the cycle was on the downward phase, the morning contraction could be quite severe.

So I prayed for an answer to how to engage in some form of practice while asleep. A couple of nights later, I found myself practicing while I was dreaming. I don’t recall the details of the dream, but I do recall practicing in the midst of it.

Another couple of nights later, I woke up with Adi Da pouring Love-Bliss down the entirety of the body, from my head all the way down to the toes. This went on for hours, as I'd alternate between engaging in Communion with Him while awake, and then letting Him continue the process while I was asleep. The good thing about our practice being a relationship, and not merely a technique, is that either partner in the relationship can take the initiative! And this was one of the moments where Adi Da was initiating. What I needed to know was how to "grasp the tail of the Horse" and let the Horse take me, while I'm sleeping. And what was demonstrated that night was that being in a powerful state of Divine Communion when I fall asleep is a good way to "grasp the tail of the Horse".

Dreams Begin to Reflect Practice Rather than Egoity. As I mentioned, one of the signs that practicing in one's sleep is bearing fruit is waking up in the morning, and feeling less contracted or not contracted at all.

Another indicator — of moment-to-moment practice throughout the day and at night — is that the content of one’s dreams starts to change. . . from random egoic content (often reflecting the issues of the day or longer term psychic issues, and sometimes taking the form of nightmares) to content that is reflecting the shift in where one is placing one’s attention and feeling: on Adi Da rather than on self. This is important not only as a sign of self-transcendence, but as a predictor of the kind of after-life experiences one will have — since the after-life bardos are generated by the very same mind that is generating one's dreams at night while one is alive.

So for example, two nights ago, in the midst of sleeping, I was practicing immersing the whole body in Adi Da’s Divine State, as I would go in and out of sleep. At one point during this multi-hour process, I had a dream.

I dreamed I was near Adi Da’s residence, probably on the island of Naitauba. A number of devotees were gathered there, awaiting Adi Da’s appearance. I found a place to sit, and as it turned out, I was sitting right next to Naamleela, Adi Da’s daughter.

Beloved Adi Da appeared, a few feet in front of us. After a while, He looked over. He seemed to take delight in finding Naamleela and I seated together — He had a big smile on His face, and then He suddenly had an iPad in His hands, which He used to take a picture of us.

Then He walked over to us and placed the iPad over both our heads. The iPad somehow grew to an enormous size, and it also somehow became a folding version of an iPad, where the screen side came down in front of our bodies, and the other side was behind us. Adi Da then used this like a gigantic (but also very comfortable) pair of tongs. He picked us up with it, and then started whirling us around Him, like planets around the Sun. I was incredibly Happy! I just let my feet hang out in the air, and just enjoyed the ride as He whirled us around. At some point, I woke up. I could feel my entire body still immersed in His Divine Happiness.

And then last night, while doing the same practice, I had this dream:

I was walking into an office with a woman I did not recognize. She accidentally dropped a piece of cream cheese on the floor of the office. I immediately went to clean it up.

But before I could get to it, Adi Da walked in, dressed in a sheriff's outfit, wearing a cowboy hat and a silver badge in the shape of a five pointed star. His right foot slipped on the cream cheese and was twisted for a moment, causing Him to grimace before He straightened out His foot.

I finished cleaning up the cream cheese.

Adi Da then looked at us both. "What are you going to do about this?"

I told Adi Da I had cleaned up the cheese. He said that was good, and then turned to the woman.

"What about you?" She apparently understood that Adi Da would need to take her through a further consideration, and so she walked out of the office with Him.

Having had many dreams like this before, I understood the symbology of the dream. Adi Da's "slip" was actually referring to a "slip" in an aspect of my own practice. That the dream was portraying it as His slip was a reminder that the Way of Adidam is all about the relationship with Him; any slip in my practice actually harmed our relationship, as indicated by the grimace on His Face. That I immediately went to "clean up" the fault in my practice as soon as I noticed it was a good thing.

Dreams like these — that include Adi Da or some aspect of the practice — are natural in the context of a moment-to-moment practice that is focused on Him.


Part IV-C, Chapter 6




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