The hearing capability: the discovery that the self-contraction is our own activity

FIGURE 1: the structure of the ego

It should be noted that the point of view presented here — that our suffering is completely the result of our own activity, and a single, primal activity of separation, at that — is radical; it is not common, and is necessarily accompanied by the view that there is an Awakened State. When, for example, various modalities of therapy and “self-help” speak of our suffering as our own responsibility, they are making a different communication. In terms of   Figure 1, which shows the entire egoic complex as a layering of patterns, with the primal act of self-contraction being the root or core act, such therapies are helping patients to reclaim conscious responsibility for otherwise unconscious acts in either of the two outer rings. “I got angry at my boss and expressed it in a destructive way; I can learn to be more relational, feeling my anger but channeling it more constructively.” I could literally provide thousands of examples of this type.

However, none of these get at the very core activity, though many of the therapies are based on "depth psychologies" that acknowledge a depth to a human being, and agree that working at a deeper level provides more leverage. Different psychological models of the ego give different names to its components: Freud's model of the ego as id, libido, and superego; Jung's introduction of archetypal patterning; and so on.

But the Spiritual process being described here pulls the rug out altogether, by focusing on the primal egoic pattern at the greatest depth, which produces the root sense of being a separate self. Once one is relieved of the sense of being a separate self in any moment, the entire motivational structure that generates all the rest of the ego — “I am a separate self, therefore, I need to defend myself”; “I am a separate self, therefore, this pain is ‘my’ pain and therefore I must try to get rid of it” — that entire set of motivations is completely undermined. As Avatar Adi Da Samraj has said, “ ‘You’ are gone, forgotten. You are simply an openness, without egoic self-reference.” Relating to others, functioning effectively — all of ordinary activity — becomes vastly simplified, because all the hidden agendas (“I want them to like me”, “I don’t want to do anything that gets him angry, because I couldn’t take that”, etc.) are being undermined through non-activation.

So understanding of self is a matter of observing the “self” in feeling (not merely intellectually) to the degree that the primal act, the self-contraction, is discovered as one’s activity. That discovery, which Avatar Adi Da Samraj calls hearing, then becomes one’s capability from that point on. In any moment, one can directly locate the root ego-activity and feel beyond it, transcending the sense of being a separate self.

It should be noted that the self-contraction doesn't just stop forever after hearing. The self-contraction is a deeply ingrained habit. Hearing simply gives one the capability to not enact the self-contraction in every moment. But one must still remember and choose to do so in every moment. It's an easy choice to make though, because after hearing, the self-contraction is obvious, only painful, and now straightforward to not "do".

Penetrating to the core of the ego and discovering the sensation that is the self-contraction (the sense of being a separate self) is the same as discovering that the self-contraction is one's own activity. The moment of discovery is the moment of freedom, because the instant one discovers that the self-contraction is one's own activity, one can (and will spontaneously) stop doing it. But how do I discover that the sense of separation is my own activity? I have to consciously be the one doing that activity. It can’t be something I am “looking at” from the outside, or merely experiencing objectively.

Try the following exercise. Sit comfortably, and fold your hands before you in a relaxed position. Allow the body to come to a complete rest, without motion. Now, as you are sitting in this state of awareness, consider this question: “Can I move my hand?” Don’t actually move your hand, though! Consider how you would know the answer to this without moving your hand. It is a feeling matter. You will discover that it involves you feeling your hand through and through. In short, it requires you to consciously and fully be your hand, to consciously “inhabit" it via feeling. In that position, with that feeling-awareness, you know (also from long, remembered experience with actually moving your hand), that, were I to now say "go ahead and do it", you could instantly follow through and move your hand.

Now our hands are something we all already are relatively consciously "being" whenever we are using them. But now imagine yourself a newborn baby, trying to stand up. You may have children yourself and may be familiar with the scene — the wobbly legs, and the falling down. They are not quite fully consciously inhabiting their legs with feeling-awareness — they are not quite fully being their legs — in the way we adults do inhabit and are being our legs when we stand up. There is still a lack of “understanding” in being the legs. But over time, they do discover how to “be” the legs, and, from that "stand-point", how to direct the legs. Enabled by that discovery are all the subsequent “leg” discoveries like standing stably, and walking.

In a similar manner, in order to discover the self-contraction as our own activity, it is not sufficient to simply feel it “from the outside”, that is, to merely feel the sense of separation. In that case, we are still not being the one doing it. We actually have to feel more fully, more deeply, until we are being the ego fully (and also feeling through and beyond it into the feeling of the all-pervading Divine) until we are fully inhabiting the entire ego with feeling. It is in this position that we become aware that we are making the fist, and, an instant later we can release it in feeling, by feeling through it and beyond it.

Note that Adi Da's use of the word, "understanding", is very precise: He uses it in its "radical" (or "root") sense, based on its etymology. To "understand" the self-contraction literally means to "stand under" it — to stand prior to the self-contraction, in the Native position, at a greater depth than the self-contraction, as Adi Da describes in the above quote. The "listening process" has moments or milestones of self-understanding, in which one is standing "under" — or at a position greater in depth than — some form of patterning that one was unconscious of or controlled by. That greater depth gives one the capability to transcend that form of patterning. Having self-understanding of, and then disciplining, the more superficial patterning of the ego frees up energy and attention that allows us to see deeper patterns. This process of observing new aspects of egoity and disciplining them (for the sake of progrssively deeper self-understanding) is what Adi Da calls the listening process. To transcend all egoity, one must listen to the point of "hearing" — one must proceed in this process to the point of fundamental self-understanding, where one is "standing under" the self-contraction itself.

Once the capability of hearing is in place, the Spiritual process of Waking Up process is greatly quickened, and capable of completion. The primary obstacle to being Melted Down and Washed by the Divine — the self-contraction — can now be transcended in every moment.

Having understood and transcended the self-contraction as it manifests on the level of ordinary physical life, we can rapidly bring the physical body to a point of great balance, freeing up much energy and attention. It is at that point that we become clearly aware of the psychic dimension, and the hearing capability now allows us to see how the self-contraction is enacting its separative activity at the level of psyche, creating an apparently separate “soul”, and we next practice transcending that separation, that deeper "level" of egoity.

This frees up even more energy and attention, which, at some point, spontaneously shifts us into the position of the Consciousness prior to the dream. Now we discover how the self-contraction manifests at the "edge of Infinity", how in its most primal form it dissociates Consciousness from the dream. In the perfection of the hearing capability, that most primal form and act of separation is understood and transcended, and we are completely Awakened to the One Divine, non-dual Reality, the awareness that there is only God.

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