The first stroke
Adi Da: “If attention is simply moving about, you’re always noticing its objects. But if that fitfulness relaxes, you can be sensitive to attention itself, because it’s steady and doesn’t just jump to objects. It has a certain kind of equanimity itself, such that attention can be comprehended. And it’s the last thing in the space – everything is epitomized as attention. When it is found in the Self-Condition, in Consciousness Itself, its something like the hearing matter. You’re in the position of that first contraction. In fact it is the hearing matter, but exercised at this later stage. Its like the original hearing understanding, because you suddenly grasp it – the self-contraction and the ability to feel beyond it.
So in this noticing and equanimity, this noticing of attention is the first stroke, really. It is the feeling of relatedness, the feeling of separateness. It is the root-disturbance, but you’re feeling beyond it. But yet you notice this is a sensation in the midst of Consciousness Itself, an apparition there. Suddenly you become aware of the Self-Field in Which that primary thought or gesture is arising. So this shift, in other words, is from being identified with attention, by focusing on it, to being identified with the Consciousness in Which its appearing. So that is the basic event in which there is a transition to the Witness-Position”.
Adi Da: "For your practice of the only-by-Me Revealed and Given Reality-Way of Adidam (or Adidam Ruchiradam) to be fruitful and effective, you must accept My “Radical” Teaching-Revelation relative to egoity. My “Radical” Teaching-Revelation relative to egoity covers everything in one stroke – everything about seeking, and all the stages-of-life nonsense whereby you idealize the egoic life."
From Jeremy Hayward’s book, ‘Warrior – King of shambhala – Remembering Chogyam Trungpa:
"Thus, by practicing the stroke we began to feel the reality of the Shambhala teachings at a profound level of mind and body; we saw the real possibility of fully joining mind and body, heaven and earth. We began to discover, for ourselves, that spiritual energy is not fundamentally different from physical energy. And we began to see how this might lead to being able to manifest this enlightened energy on this earth".
