A love story -- mine

I was born in Scotland and grew up in a nominally Presbyterian family, mum, dad, four kids. Church on Sundays, if it happened at all, was wearing your best clothes and seeing what everyone else was wearing. It certainly wasn't much about the sacred. 

When I was about ten, we migrated to Australia, and life became sun and beaches and school and fun. As I moved into my middle teens, however, I began feeling a sense of something missing. I started to drop into adolescent, existential despairing moods. As I grew older, I began to really notice the intensity of this feeling of "something missing",
and began actively looking for answers. My first "answer" was to get out there and have fun, really enjoy! So I experimented with the whole sex, drugs and rock-and-roll scene of the late 60s and early 70s.
 
However, feminist doctrine notwithstanding, I became aware that having multiple sex partners was not making me happy, and having fun all the time was not really fun at all. I got married on impulse to someone I didn’t know very well, thinking that he was my white knight and this would be the happiness I was looking for. After a year I realized that wasn't going to work either, so we separated.

When I was in my late twenties, I decided I needed therapy. It seemed to me that a lot of people were into therapy, and maybe through this I would find "myself", whatever that meant. I became involved with a personal growth organization. I really felt the benefit of it -- I was starting to deal with some of my ordinary emotional problems.

For eight years, I did workshop after workshop after workshop. You name it, I workshopped it. It was crystals one weekend, aura reading the next weekend, how to origame your pet the weekend after. I became actively involved in running and teaching courses and workshops, reading all sorts of books and materials, Louise Hay, Shakti Gawain. I really enjoyed it. I had found it beneficial for myself and I could see that it made a difference in other people's lives as well. But somehow, I knew I wasn't yet truly happy.

By profession, I was at that time (the early 80s) a radio announcer in Melbourne . I felt an interesting dichotomy – on the one hand, I had a life that was becoming somewhat glamorous in the small pond of Australia: I was co-hosting a radio show, was a minor celebrity in town; attended lots of parties and theatre and dinner and premieres of movies; and I even met Prince Charles and Princess Diana! So there was apparent success in my live on one level, and there was the other side of my life which was a desperate, desperate search for "meaning".

I kept wondering to myself when I was going to get happy! I thought perhaps there was something wrong with me, that maybe I had a happiness-deficient gene. 
I decided to enter into somatic psychotherapy, and I was recommended to go to a woman called Mary Ann Sea. As it transpired - I didn't know it at the time - Mary Ann was a devotee of Adi Da Samraj. I began sessions with her - she'd lay me down and say, "What are you feeling?", and "What's going on?" And instead of saying things like, "Oh, I'm having trouble with my relationship", or whatever, I would say "I want to know what's really going on! What is this all about, this whole existence thing? What's going on?"  After about three or four sessions, she said to me: "Look, you don't need therapy. There's nothing 'wrong' with you, you're simply on a Spiritual search!" I was totally surprised! I didn't have any understanding of my search for happiness as a Spiritual thing. She said "What I think you should do is go away, read some books, some Spiritual teachings from some real Spiritual teachers, and then maybe come back and talk to me about it, and let's see how it goes."

So she sent me off to a couple of bookstores, and one of them was the Dawn Horse Bookstore, in downtown Melbourne. I went, not intending to buy any books; I was just going to check it out. However, as I was leaving the store, I noticed a very large book with a most exquisite cover, a symbol of beautiful horse surrounded by a fire and blue light. It was The Dawn Horse Testament of Avatar Adi Da Samraj. I just had to buy it. When I got the book home, I admired the cover again, put it on my bookshelf, and forgot all about it. I obviously wasn't ready for what was available to me at the time.

Years went on, I left the entertainment industry, burnt out, and finally, in 1990, I moved to Sydney. Even though I had never opened it, I took The Dawn Horse Testament to Sydney with me as well, and there it sat, unread, for another year. Then one evening, I was at home, nothing much to do, my flatmate had gone out, there was nothing on TV, internet was a thing of the future. I glanced up at the bookcase and realised the only book I hadn't read in my entire collection was The Dawn Horse Testament”. I thought, "Maybe I'll have a look and see what's in this." I sat down on the couch and I opened it to random pages.

The most bizarre thing happened: I was sitting browsing the book, when suddenly the words started to blur, and light started to come off the pages: literally, there was a shimmering light flickering up from the book, like something out of a science fiction movie. I had been meditating for a few years and my body used to move slightly when I was meditating. I was looking at this book, light flickering off the pages, and my body started to sway! I slammed the book shut and I thought, "What is happening here? I'm hot, maybe I'm getting the 'flu!" 

But .. what I noticed was that I began to feel really happy! I opened the Dawn Horse Testament again at a different page, and the same thing happened - except light was streaming off the page by this point! I was seeing the words, and it was as if I were reading Latin or Greek; it didn't mean anything to my mind .. but I,somehow, knew what this book was about. I was reading words that meant absolutely nothing to me - esoteric, unintelligible language ..and I was feeling happier and happier, and the light continued emanating from the pages! I literally ended up hugging this book to my chest and dancing around the room! I had become ecstatic! And I still did not understand a word I had read!

I knew I wanted to know more about the author of this "magic" book. The next day, I was glancng through the newspaper and amazingly, I saw a small advertisement for an introductory video presentation on Adi Da and the Way of the Heart. I rang and said, "I must to come, immediately! I want to see a video!"

Two or three days later I went to the event. The video shown was one of Adi Da Samraj in the later 1970's, speaking to a gathering of HIs devotees. As He began talking, I had another experience of what had happened to me reading His book, but much more intense. Almost the minute I heard His voice and saw His face, I was moved into an ecstatic state, --then my peripheral vision disappeared. Nothing like this had ever happened to me before. Everything but the centre of my vision went black, all sound disappeared. There was a roomful of people and the video was loud, but I couldn't hear anything. There was only white light emanating from the video - except for Adi Da's face, everything else was just light, and my peripheral vision was black. Again, I felt very, very happy - totally, unreasonably happy. I knew I was receiving something extraordinary from an extraordinary Being - this was no ordinary man. I just sat there, ecstatic, and at the end of the video, I knew my search was over.  I had found It. I was Home. I felt a heart rest I couldn't explain, but I'd seen His Face and I "knew" that Face, and I knew I was Home.

There was not a shred of doubt in my mind. I had been searching for happiness my whole life, and I knew Grace when I saw it. Something in me recognized this Happiness. I cried all the way home out of sheer joy. After I went to bed, I dreamt about Adi Da all night. It was a weird night - it wasn't sleep, it wasn't dreaming, it was somewhere in between, and I kept saying the word “Love-Ananda”. I didn't even know it was one of His Names. 

Then .. about four or five in the morning I was lying awake in an incredibly happy state. I felt something and lifted my head to look at the bottom of my bed. There was this Being, Adi Da Samraj, surrounded by golden light. He looked at me and said, "Well, it's about time!" And then the vision disappeared. I thought to myself "It's about time"?? I thought I must havee imagined it. Surely, no Spiritual Teacher is going to stand at the end of my bed in subtle form and say, "Well, it's about time!" (I subsequently discovered that Adi Da Samraj has an incredible sense of humour and that that is exactly the sort of thing He would have said to a new devotee ,in the early years when He interacted informally with devotees.)

But I knew He was telling the Truth. I knew He was saying He had been waiting for me for a long time, just as I had been waiting for Him.

You see, I never thought that Happiness was real, because I had looked for it for so long and I did not see it in my life. But every day when I wake up and remember that I am a devotee of Avatar Adi Da Samraj, I know that I was wrong and that Happiness is real, and that Love is real, and that He Is the Great One, the Embodiment of Love.

He Is here, and there is nothing more important than that.