I was aware today, in an unprecedented way, how I "contract" energy into a "little me".
Adidam calls this "hearing".
"The hearing capability: the discovery that the self-contraction is our own activity"
http://www.aboutadidam.org/self_understanding/hearing.html
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 this 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 easy 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.