A Natural Response
(continued)

Something Entirely New and DIfferent

Adi Da said at the beginning of His very first public talk:

“...There is a disturbance, a feeling of dissatisfaction, some kind of sensation that motivates a person to go to a teacher, read a book about philosophy, believe something or do some conventional form of Yoga. What people ordinarily think of as religion or Spirituality is a search to get free of the sensation, the suffering, that is motivating them...“

This was certainly the case for me!

That feeling propelled me into our local alternative bookstore "The Self-Connection" in Calgary, the following day to look for one of His books. They had none in stock, so I was pointed to the Books in Print Catalogue that all bookstores have. Much to my amazement, there was a long list of books by this author. "Why haven't I ever heard of him before?" I thought that I was quite well read. I ordered a title that caught my fancy, "The Enlightenment of the Whole Body" and returned home to my family to await its arrival. And that brings me back to the point in my story where I began.

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Since that time, I have understood that the first response I had with Adi Da's book was a devotional response to a Spiritual Transmission from a Supreme Spiritual Realizer. I felt a flow of energy in my body and a sense of having come into relationship with something very real. His words resonated in my heart, relieving it of its questions and pulling it towards His words. I felt my body relax as a smile lighted up my being and my breath deepened.

In the same essay I quoted above, Adi Da wrote:

“...People are constantly seeking to create a connection, a flow of life-force, between the self-contracted identity and everything from which it has differentiated itself. The usual philosophy, religion, Yoga, Spirituality-all your strategies (even your simple psychological strategies, your lifestyles) are all attempts to restore the flow of life-energy...“

I was feeling a flow of life-energy!

A Time of Growth

After that first reading, I began to look for other materials. I acquired an audiotape, and when I first heard His laughter----my whole body responded with happiness. I began to feel something different in my day to day life, a sense of happiness was awaking that was magnified each time I read or heard something from Adi Da. And that happiness spilled over into all my activities.

At that time, there were a few of us in Calgary responding to Adi Da, and we began to meet. And at one point, we held an event for new people, at a meeting room at the University. My former counselor had invited two devotees to come up to Calgary from our main Sanctuary in Northern California. The event attracted a large crowd and was very interactive. I remember being very moved in seeing these devotees and in hearing them and watching them interact with each other and with us. There was something special about them. I was feeling it and I was liking it. Something felt very real to me.

Also what I began to feel was a sense of community. Our small group was meeting regularly, sometimes with our families, and sometimes without, and I felt the beginnings of a spiritual practice--a practice that I felt in my daily life in a way that I had never experienced before. I would study first thing every morning.

I was doing a mail-in correspondence course with devotees in Seattle. Our local group would meet and talk about our studies and our growing response to what we were reading. I was feeling what it was like to be involved in way of life that extended into every part of my life, everyday.

Encountering Adi Da

From the beginning, with my initial response came the desire to share this great teaching with others. So while still in Calgary, we held events and invited new people to hear about Adi Da. We then made a collective decision, along with other Canadians, in different areas of the country, to move to Toronto to establish a Canadian Adidam Region.

From that time, I have been involved in the Canadian community's development and the Mission work in Toronto and western Quebec. I have also spent 3 years living and studying in Northern California close to the main Adidam Sanctuary called The Mountain of Attention and working in our community school.

While in California, I was finally able to go on a retreat to Naitauba, Fiji where Adi Da was residing. This moment came in 1991 after practicing as His devotee for 7 years. The intensity of my emotions, on first seeing Him, surprised me. He was driven, ever so slowly, by our retreat center where we stood along the roadway awaiting Him. He sat in the car positioned so that He could look directly out of the open window at each one of us. As His eyes directly met mine for a few precious seconds, my heart swelled in a response of love and gratitude. I bowed down and began to weep from a very deep place in my being.

I choked for breath and wept and wept. Then, I began to recognize a familiar feeling. It was the feeling of coming into contact with the Truth, with what was Real, and being released of all my thoughts, questions, problems, in a recognition of a condition which I didn't even have words to describe. It was beyond words and it was the same feeling I had when I read the first book and all the moments after.

I had felt the transmission of His Perfect State all along. It is not limited by time and space. It is available whenever my attention and feeling are drawn to Him.

Dynamics of The Current of Life

I have to say that what I have experienced, living this way of life of Adidam with its continual flow of revelations and real life obligations, is, in my opinion, the most interesting, challenging, intelligent, thought-provoking, mind-blowing, dynamic, living process taking place on our planet today. It literally pulls me out of any self-meditation I may be involved in, and into another place of reality, and with it a sense of release, relief, joy and happiness.

I feel more balanced, more alive, and more present in all relationships. Everyday, I grow in my understanding of what I am doing that prevents this sense of happiness from simply remaining constant. I have been relieved of the need to find out the meaning of life and the seeking that the need generated in me. I have heard the truth about life and the real condition and my life has become simple and happy.

A number of years ago, I recognized that that heaviness that had come upon me with my father's death had been completed lifted from me and I have been greatly relieved of my sorrow through reading Adi Da's Easy Death book. I feel a huge sense of freedom and joy and happiness everyday as I fulfill the daily life obligations I have taken on as devotee, and I know what the purpose of my life is.

I invite you to explore this Way of Adidam—allow your questions and doubts and desires to come up, because there are answers for all your life questions and there is satisfaction for a yearning heart.

As Adi Da has recently said in one of the latest publications called “UP?”…

“…In order to practice true religion, you must become responsible for the religious conventions your patterning represents-and you must do this via a sophisticated and intensive investigation of all your mere ideas, however casual your inheritance of them may have been.”

What Adi Da presents is "a comprehensive system of unique books, that will, if rightly and consistently used, enable that investigation to be truly effective and successful" in relationship to a Supreme Master. There is no greater gift than this!

Please consider joining us on this most interesting and liberating investigation by calling an Adidam center closest to you. They have books, DVD's, CD's as well as events and classes. Looking forward to meeting you!

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