The Creative Task Of Practice

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SACRED HISTORY for February 22^nd

1988 Adi Da Samraj Gathers with devotees the day after the burning of confessions during the Sovereign Avataric Rite of Fire Purification, and Describes how our application to the practice He Has Given must be fiercely uncompromising, moment to moment, especially when it appears to be most difficult.

His Divine Presence, Parama-Sapta-Na Adi Da, Says:

“As My devotee, you do not have any right to failures of competence relative to ego-transcending practice. You must submit to the struggle and really engage yourself in it. Overcome your limitations. That is what I call the creative task of practice in My Company. Even for beginners, more and more, this is so. You are not in the first three stages of life any more, once become My devotee. You are no longer children or adolescents. You are supposed to be individuals functioning with the competence that begets to My devotee. Therefore, you must make use of My Gifts, and function accordingly. And you should give yourself no quarter, no right to do otherwise. So, it should not make any difference to you what comes up by tendency. It should not make any difference to you whatsoever.

The days in which you are tested are difficult. And, having Heard Me, it is not that you have some magic capability that makes them not difficult. All you have to do, if you are having a ‘bad day’, is go to the Communion Hall and it vanishes! [Adi Da snaps His fingers] Yet, on many of those days it does not vanish in the Communion Hall. You must work and struggle there, too. You get up from the Communion Hall—it is the same, the sense of difficulty is still on you. You go about your duty, living that day, and it is still there. It is an ordeal. That is why I Call the ego-transcending Way of Life I Give you an ordeal, because the testing is not easy.

You must function, you must turn to Me through this limitation that seems like it cannot be relieved in those hours when things are most difficult. Well, this is how you break the back of your conditioning, of your ego-possession.

This is how you purify yourself. This is how you remove the ‘stain’. Effectively, that is what you were supposed to be doing when you burned your confessions in the Fire. It is burning up karmas, releasing, relinquishing habits, and belief in them, identification with them. Instead, apparently, you just turned it into some formality, a ceremony that did not increase your competence in the moment to moment ordeal of practice. It made you somehow even lazier, justified your ego-possession, allowed you to become even less aware of your responsibilities.

You cannot reduce this Way of Life to ceremony. You cannot reduce devotional Communion with Me to ceremony. You cannot reduce your relationship to Me to rituals you perform with a photograph. You cannot reduce the Reality-Way of Adidam to reading, talking, thinking. It is an action. It is the discipline of Truth. It is an ordeal. It is difficult. It is a test. A test you must pass.” ~Adi Da Samrajashram

1999 Adi Da Samraj finishes the Essay, “I Am The Horse In The Wild”, ~Tat Sundaram Hermitage