Preparation: It is best to do this exercise in a familiar, quiet, comfortable place where other influences (noises, bright light, pets, etc.) won’t interfere with the exercise.

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This guided meditation is adapted from Avatar Adi Da’s primary book for children, What, Where, When, How, Why, and Who To Remember To Be Happy. As such, it conveys His message to children from birth to fourteen years of age. Because of the developmental differences in this age range, first and second stagers should be invited to participate in different ways.

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Very young first stagers should sit on a parent’s lap (or that of another close, trusted adult) for this exercise. Older first stagers should lie on the floor (on a carpet, blanket, or mat as necessary to provide comfort) while a parent (or other adult) sits on the floor right next to them and reads the following aloud. Maintaining gentle physical contact with older first stagers during the exercise, in a light massage-like manner, may also help them sustain their participation in the exercise.

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Younger first stagers may not be able to sustain attention for this entire exercise. In that case, shorten it by reading only one or two of the segments below to them.

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Second stagers can choose either to sit in a comfortable meditation pose or lie on the floor while an adult reads aloud.

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For both first and second stagers, reading the guided excercise softly, slowly, with emphasis and quiet strength helps direct children into the exercise.

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Note: The first part of this exercise is usable by anyone. While everyone is welcome to make use of the final portion of the exercise, it is intended most specifically for first and second stage members of the Adidam Youth Fellowship and is adapted from Avatar Adi Da's Word.

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Let’s have a special time for “sitting--and--doing--nothing--else--but--remembering the Mystery”! It’s a good idea to do this, because it will help you stay happy and keep on loving and not be afraid or angry or upset. So let’s do nothing but be really quiet and feel the Mystery, right now.

 

Remembering the Mystery is a way of staying the way you really are—before you start to name things and think and know about anything.

 

Before you name or think or know, you already are and you already feel.

 

You can feel the Mystery, right now.

 

Feel the Mystery, or feel Real God, which is the same thing.

 

Keep on remembering Real God as the Mystery, and you will feel happy.

 

Keep on remembering the Mystery and you will act happy to others too.

 

Let’s practice feeling the Mystery right now.

 

1.

 

Feel that you don't know what a single thing Is.

 

You may know the name of something or someone, or all kinds of things about them. But you do not know what anything or anyone is, before the naming starts.

 

Feel that you don’t know what anything or anyone is. See how you feel quiet and happy when you forget all the names?

 

Let go of thinking and needing to know.

 

Feel the Mystery.

 

Feel how the Mystery is good feeling, full of light and happiness and love.

 

Feel the Mystery, and feel how you only feel good, and true, and full of love, and radiating.

 

Now, breathe in all the good feeling of the Mystery and breathe out all the unhappy feelings you might be thinking about—like being afraid, or angry, or selfish, or mean, or just unhappy.

 

Feel to yourself: "Breathe in the good stuff—Breathe out the bad stuff."

 

Do this feeling-breathing, in and out, again and again.

 

Breathe in all the happy feeling about the Mystery, and remember the Mystery stronger and stronger.

 

Feel that you aren't remembering and breathing the Mystery anymore—but the Mystery is remembering and feeling and breathing you!

 

What a Mysterious great happy Mystery the Mystery is!

 

 

2.

 

Now feel this: you are more than what you look like!

 

The body part of you—the way you look when you are awake—is only part of the way you are.

 

When you sleep or dream, the rest of who you are goes on in the Mystery.

 

When you think or feel, you are also being more than the body part of you.

 

Who you really are is a great and happy Mystery.

 

Feel yourself to be in the Mystery, now.

 

Feel the Mystery real strong, and breathe It.

 

Let your breathing become real quiet, and feel the Mystery—really quiet and strong.

 

Now close your eyes, and cover your ears—so you can't hear any noises in the room or outside your face. Then listen inside. Listen up toward the top of your head, with your eyes closed. Try it now.

 

Do you hear all the sounds inside your face? There is ringing and tinkling, and popping and tapping and fluting, and thumping like a xylophone, and strumming and drumming, and ocean roaring, and waterfalling, and booming and buzzing, and all kinds of sounds like birds and crickets and bees and music, and a big deep humming all over, and some kind of feeling way up that you cannot even hear, and especially lots of quiet, too.

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Now softly put a finger over each eye, with your eyes closed and looking up inside toward the top of your head. Try it now.

 

There are lights, and zigzags, and lightning, and stars, and moving shiny spots, and shivering shapes, and all kinds of spaces and moons and suns (and even places), and all kinds of things to see—like in dreams, and really, too.

 

Feel what you Are that is more than what you look like.

 

You are electrical, and you are light and sound—whatever all of that may be.

 

Feel the Mystery of who you Are and how you go on and on.

 

 

3.

Feel the Mystery.

 

Feel how you do the feeling and breathing and listening and looking and naming all the time. You do all that, but you aren’t anything you know or feel or see or hear or look like or name or think.

 

All these things just happen—and you get to watch or know or think them.

 

You get to see and hear and name them.

 

You feel and see your own body.

 

You feel and see your inside sounds or lights or dreams—or all the places that come up.

 

You do the feeling and breathing and listening and looking and naming all the time.

 

You even think "I", and "me", and "mine".

 

Well, what are you, if you only watch all of these things?

 

You Are the Mystery! Yes! And you don't even know what you Are, either. Yes!

 

There Is Only the Mystery!

 

You yourself—in your Real Heart, and up and down and in and out—Are the Mystery.

 

It Is All One Feeling!

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Avatar Adi Da says to you:

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Beloved, I am Da,  and I have always been remembering and feeling and breathing and loving and Being the Mystery.

 

Happiness is the now-and-forever Mystery that Is the Real Heart of every one.

 

I have Come from the Heart of every one.

 

I Am in (and in front of) the Heart of every one.

 

Because I Am the Real Heart Itself, I will always forever be remembering and feeling and breathing and loving and Being the Mystery—for you.