ROBERT ADAMS

 Liberation Exists Within Yourself

So, if you really want freedom, liberation, you do not go searching for this. It is nowhere to be found. For it already exists within yourself.

You are already That, so where can you go searching for it?

Who can give it to you?

If you want water, you turn on the tap. You do not look at the tap and scream and cry, "I want water." You turn on the tap and you

have water. Yet when you were a little kid, you didn't know how to turn on the tap. Therefore, if you wanted a drink, you would cry and make a fuss, and your mom or dad would open the tap and give you a drink. So can you drink from the spring of eternal life, which is your Reality. You have to turn on the tap. YOU have to turn on the tap. You turn on the tap by letting go of everything that you are. Everything. When I say everything, I mean everything. You have to turn yourself inside out. Can you imagine how you would look turned inside out? Wouldn't be a pretty sight.

Most of us believe, in Advaita Vedanta, that if you hear the right word, that if you awaken through the grace of a sage, you will be free. This is true in some cases. But these people that you have read about in the holy books, who were touched by the grace of a sage, these people have done their homework, prior to this happening. You have to want it

yourself, and when you want it badlyenough, something will happen to you. When you desire liberation more than anything else in life, this means you have begun to give up the rest of your stuff that we talked about. That's the only way to desire liberation. This is a legitimate desire, because you are not really asking for anything, you are giving up the stuff you don't need anymore: your anger, your pettiness, your bad disposition, your temper, your greed, all of the things we were carrying around with us so long.

This is how you desire liberation, by speaking to the Lord within you. This is total surrender. "Lord, take my anger, take my greed, take my bad disposition, take my temper," and you give it up totally. Once you do this, automatically you are liberated. So you see, it's not the other way around; it's not trying to find freedom, liberation, Self-realization, to add to what we already are. You cannot add one iota to what you already are because you are full up with your own garbage.

You therefore have to empty the garbage can, turn yourself upside down, and empty yourself out, and it is then that you will find that you are already free.

And even as I talk to you about these things, some of you here are so full with yourself, small "s," with your ego, that you'll never, never, never, let go completely and give up all your stuff. For your ego has been telling you all these years if you do this you'll be nowhere.

But isn't this exactly where you want to be? Nowhere!

When you are nowhere, you are not somewhere, and in the nowhere there is nothing. This nothing is everything. This nothing is what we call Effortless Pure Awareness, Absolute Pure Reality, Sat-Chit-Ananda, Nirvana. It is what is left over after you have given up all your stuff.

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T. 127 @ The Three Virtues: Compassion, Humility and Service - February 9, 1992