post 12 Robert

Running away is never the answer. Changing yourself is the answer.

Take a look at your own life and see if it is not true what I'm saying. The changes you've gone through in your life. I know so many people who have left their home and family and gone to India to meditate, to find gurus, teachers. They have come back very depressed, even suicidal. For they've given up everything. Remember, there's nothing you have to give up. Only mentally do you give up attachment.

Always look at the world as a reflection of you. You are the world. The world can be nothing without your approval. It sounds strange, but true. You have to stop identifying conditions apart from yourself. I know it seems hard to do. When you see the riots we've just had, the murders, the looting, it seems really difficult to realize you are one with this. But think about this. Why should you only think you are one with the good things? If you are One, you are One with everything. Never just the good things that you enjoy and you like and bring into your life. 

You are All-Pervading, Omnipresent, and you are One with all there is.

The correct way to observe this is to look at everything in the world intelligently without any comments, without any reactions. Do not be for or against anything. Train yourself to observe, to watch, to look without any reaction. You may start training yourself with the small things. Work on the small things first. As an example, if you go outside and you have a ticket on your car for over-parking, catch yourself reacting to this by not reacting at all. Simply see the situation look at the situation, have no comment, no reaction. Pay the ticket and forget it. Do not think this is good, this is bad, this is outrageous, this is wrong, I don't deserve it. If you didn't deserve it, it wouldn't happen. 

Say you stub your toe. Instead of cursing the chair, getting upset, feel the pain, observe it, watch it, and let it go. Everything that takes place in your life, this is the way you should react. Someone cheats you, and you're thinking of taking them to court to sue them. Think about this carefully. 

Is this what I really want to do? And then your ego will say, of course you do, you were cheated. 

Your business partner cheated you out of $50,000. So you want to take this person to court to sue them. Say you did go to court and you won the case. You think this is good. But something will happen to even it out again. You'll have to go to court again and again and again. 

Sometimes you will win, sometimes you will lose. There are people like that you know. 

I'm thinking of a particular woman right now who makes a habit of going to court at least once a month. She is always suing somebody for something. Sometimes she wins and sometimes she loses, and she's a nervous wreck. She's not a happy woman.

If you begin to understand that everything is in its right place, how can somebody do something to you? No one can hurt you. What is rightfully yours, no one can ever take away. So why worry? Why be upset? It makes life so much easier. You start to worry and you become upset because in your finite mind, in your ego mind, you're thinking, "Well I've been cheated out of $50,000, this is all the money I have. I'm going to go to the poorhouse, I'll become a homeless person," and your mind keeps playing tricks with you. Telling you all the bad things that are going to happen to you. If you can only laugh at yourself and stop thinking of those things, you will find that you have risen higher in consciousness, and you're in control of the situation, and all is well. 

Never allow your mind to play tricks on you, to play games with you, and tell you about all the things that might happen. And then fear comes in and you start running 

around, crying, trying to correct things, trying to make things good, while you keep thinking about all the bad things that are going to happen to you. These things we are talking about are very important, for it keeps you back from thinking of truth and reality. It keeps you back from moksha, from liberation, for you are spending all your time involved in the material world. I'm not saying you should give up thinking about your business, or thinking about your family, or thinking about things in your life. But make them short and sweet. Think a couple of minutes about these things, and 

leave them alone.

- Robert Adams. 

T. 155 @ This Is Your Dharma - May 21, 1992