*** When Will I Awaken? **

Many people still ask me, "Robert will I be enlightened in this life or do I have to go through many lives?

Will I awaken in this life?

Will I become free in this life or do I have to go on playing games like everybody else, making believe, when will I awaken?"

And it's very funny to me.

My answer is never!

You'll never awaken!

It's like the water in the mirage asking,

"When will I become real water?

How long do I have to be a mirage?

When will I become the real water?"

Of course it will never become the real water.

For the mirage can never become anything but a mirage.

It will always be a mirage.

So it is with us.

What you are can never be anything else.

For you do not exist as a body at all.

And if you do not exist as a body what can become self-realized?

In other words you have nothing to become self-realized with.

You cannot become self-realized it's impossible.

Forget about it.

Don't even think of it.

Self-realization has absolutely nothing to do with your body or your thoughts or your mind or your practices or your sadhanas or anything else.

Self-realization is the ultimate reality.

It is the pure awareness, the nirvana and that doesn't exist either.

So what exists?

There is no answer.

For what exists can never be known with a finite mind.

This is why we do the work from where we are.

We do not think about becoming self-realized or becoming liberated.

We simply wonder who we are.

We just ask ourselves, "Where does this body come from?

What appears to be a body?"

And we compare it to the water in the mirage.

It's an hallucination.

It has no validity.

In other words you have no existence whatsoever.

You have never had an existence.

Nothing exists.

Yet we appear to exist.

So what to do?

Nothing, there is nothing you can do about it.

That's just the way it is.

Do not try to change it.

Stay the way you are and keep still.

That is the best thing you can do.

Be happy just the way you are.

Of course the only way you can be happy is by keeping still and not reacting to things, by leaving everything alone and being yourself.

When I say, "Being yourself", I mean being you the way you are right now, nothing else.

The world of reality exists by itself.

It just is.

There is nothing you can do to change anything.

Do not try to change anything.

Do not work on yourself.

For every time you're working on yourself you are emphasizing that you're the self, the mortal self that needs to be worked at.

"just be yourself" the way you are right now, in this moment.

I'm not saying to be yourself last week or to be your self a week from now.

Be yourself right this moment, this second, this instant and you'll be safe.

Do not concern yourself how to be the self.

Do not concern yourself what you have to do to be the self.

Don't even wonder what it is to be the self.

Just be!

Do not question it.

Do not try to understand it.

You will always be the way you are, nothing will can ever change that.

So you might as well get on with that and be happy.

Suffering comes when you try to change yourself.

Suffering ensues when you try to develop moksha, liberation.

When you try to transcend yourself, then you suffer.

For you are trying to attain something that doesn't exist and it hurts.

Isn't it wonderful not to do anything.

Never try to attain a thing or become anything else.

What about pain, what about lack and limitation, what about poverty.

What about the rest of these things that exist?

It's all part of life.

Do not try to get rid of it.

Look at it, accept it, be happy with it and leave it alone.

What I'm really saying is, "Get your mind off yourself".

Stop thinking about yourself.

Stop thinking about anybody else.

Whatever is supposed to come to you will come to you.

Whatever you are supposed to have you will have.

Wherever you have to go you will go.

You have absolutely nothing to do with it.

So why not enjoy where you are right this moment.

Stop trying to change things.

The very trying makes them worse.

The body that you're wearing right now is an hallucination.

You are not that person whatsoever.

But because you appear as that person you go through many experiences of what that person has to go through.

Do not fight it.

Do not try to change it.

Leave everything alone.

You'll be very surprised at what happens if you leave everything alone.

But when you try to change bad for good you're fighting a losing battle for it cannot be done.

You may tell me of people who have used their mind to achieve things in the world, to heal themselves of disease, to heal themselves of lack or limitation, to become powerful beings through thinking.

Those things are only changes, temporary changes.

Do not try to be a human being.

Go beyond that.

You go beyond that by doing nothing.

Yet some of you do not understand and think you have to sit down like a lump and do nothing on the contrary.

When you're doing nothing you're doing something.

Something is being done.

Something will always be done by you.

Yet at the same time nothing is being done.

So the question is, "Is something being done or is nothing being done?" and there is no answer.

What do you want to achieve and why do you wish to achieve those things?

Only for your self aggrandizement.

An animal leads a normal life.

It cannot think like we do.

It goes through its life and when it's time to leave their life it leaves it peacefully, happily.

But as human beings we fight, trying to live forever.

Trying to maintain the same beauty we've always had, the same happiness, the same joy.

This is all a waste of energy.

All is well, just the way it is.

You are perfect just the way you are.

There is nothing that you have to do.

There is no-one you have to please.

There is no God that you have to appease.

You are the one.

All of these ideas that are going through your mind of people, places, things, Gods, are all you.

You are creating everything.

Everything that you can think about you're creating.

Everything comes out of yourself.

Just like you're dreaming.

The mistake we make is we try to awaken from the dream, the mortal dream, from this dream.

Yet who is to awaken from it?

The person that wants to awaken doesn't exist.

Do you see what I'm saying?

Nothing exists that has to do anything.

The person who wants to be free does not exist, has never existed.

The person who is looking for moksha does not exist.

Then again what does exist?

Total silence exists.

Pure profound silence.

Never try to comprehend these things.

For you're using the mind, you're using the cells that are the mind, that are connected to the cells of the universe and you make your life miserable by doing this.

There is no difference between you and a tree or a mountain, a sky or the ocean.

The whole universe is composed of hydrogen atoms.

So you're nothing but a hydrogen atom.

How does it feel to be a hydrogen atom?

See how you mind begins to think?

It's difficult for most of you to stay silent.

You are not required to understand a thing I say.

I speak utter nonsense.

It's all nonsense and some of you are taking it in so profoundly like it's important.

Who are you really?

I have no idea?

If you have an idea of who you are you've got a problem.

For you're not that at all.

Again we go back to the beginning when I opened up this sentence.

Who thinks they're something.

You can never be anything.

The 'you' that you think you are can never be a thing.

Always remember this.

The 'you' can never become anything.

The only freedom you really have is to be still and quiet and that is the only freedom you've got.

To be totally quiet.

Everything else is an hallucination, a lie.

So most of you want me to sit here and tell you lies.

Stop worrying.

Stop fretting.

Stop believing something can happen to you, to hurt you.

What you are was never born.

It knows nothing of birth.

The one that knows about birth and death doesn't exist.

So here we are together again.

Why do you come here?

If you have a reason for coming here it's the wrong reason.

There is no reason for doing anything at all.

(long silence)

~ Robert Adams ,When Will I Awaken?

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