#robert adams

[pierppasolini]

Forbidden Letters (1979) // dir. Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

[ko-existing]

Saying "anything is possible" is an understatement.

by Being_is_IT / Twitter

Q: Because it is dream-like, anything is possible. So there’s no actual problems, right?

A: Yes, anything or any situation is possible. There is no actual restriction or limit. But it seems to the Mind that there are full of restrictions and limits. Yes, no actual problems, but just like in a dream, there seems to be full of problems. This is the magic that only SELF can appreciate. Saying "anything is possible" is an understatement.

Human language can't describe this magic. It's infinitely more magical than you can ever imagine. It is so magical that it can appear to have no magic. It's so magical that insubstantiality can appear substantial.

It's so magical that space-less and timeless can appear as space and time. It's so magical that absolute perfection can appear as if it is imperfect. That's how magic works. The Mind complains that there is no freedom.

But this is exactly how unconditional freedom appears to be. So, "feeling in bondage" is indeed an illusion projected by the Mind. The Mind complains that everything is hard and solid and there are so many hardships to overcome in life. Although such feelings of hardships may appear to be very obvious, it is an illusion projected by the Mind. This is exactly how the magic functions, illusions always appear very real.

Otherwise, illusion won't be illusion. If you don't get what I am talking about, just remind yourself how real a dream plotline feels until it pops. Through continuous noticing, your innate sensitivity will automatically increase, there will come a moment you will discover this magic while the current plotline seemingly continuing to proceed.

[lotusmi]

[joeinct]

Summer Nights, Photo by Robert Adams, 1985

[4dkellysworld]

Some suggested practices or experiments from Robert Adams

Be totally silent for a day - Do you think you can do it? Just for one day, tomorrow, be silent. Do not say a word to anybody. Try to spend that day by yourself if you can. If you have to go to work for a living, if you have to go to work, be silent in your mind. Now here's how you work this: if you have to talk to your employees or your employer, talk to them but shut it out of your mind. Do not entertain what you say. Get rid of it immediately after you finished. If you talk about a work problem, resolve the problem and then go back to silence. In other words do not carry it with you. Do not carry it with you at all.

Sit in silence as much as possible for a week - Isn't it better just to sit still at home in the silence and stop the mind from thinking? That's the easiest way, it's the best way, it's the simplest way. If you don't believe me, try it. Try it for a week and see what happens. For one week I would like you to experiment. I don't want you to read any book. Think you can do it? Don't look at any spiritual literature. Just sit by yourself as much as you can. And watch your mind, watch your mind. Do whatever you have to do to slow down your mind and then you're going to be amazed. You will laugh at yourself. For when the mind becomes quiescent, reality will rush in. And you'll see it's so simple, it’s so simple. Why didn't I know this all the time? I used to believe by reading volume after volume I'll become enlightened. But it was so easy, I just had to quiet my mind.

Identify as I-AM as you wake up - If you ask yourself when you go to sleep, you tell yourself, "Tomorrow morning as soon as I open my eyes I am going to identify with my source, I-am," and you will, even if for a second, it will change your life. First thing when you open your eyes, ask yourself. “Who am I?” Just put this question and see what will happen to you. You'll feel something different. But you'll have to do it every morning. Just try it and see what happens. You'll see Oneness. Keep asking yourself, “Who am I? Who am I?” when you first get up. As you keep on doing this every morning, every morning, every morning, the time between your awakening and the thought coming to you will become larger that space will expand, and expand, and expand until you are able to stay in the awareness. Of course at that time there will no longer be a "you". There will only be the awareness. Try it, you have to investigate. You have to intelligently dive deep within yourself and find the source of your I.

I-AM meditation for one day - You relax your body and you inhale and you say "I," and you exhale and you say "am, I-am". You can do this while you're waking, while you're walking, while you're washing dishes, while you're resting. What it does is it makes your mind one pointed, so it'll stop thinking. If you can practice I-am for one day, just one day, all of your troubles will be transcended. You will feel happiness you've never felt before. You will feel a peace that you never even knew existed. As you keep practicing I-am, your thoughts will become less and less. Your personal self will go into the background and you will begin to feel an inner joy, an inner bliss. You will begin to feel that it no longer matters what I am going through. It makes no difference, because it is God who is going through this, not me. And God has no problems. You automatically become happy, just by using the I-am meditation.

Love your Self every day - Begin to love your Self. I know that's really hard for some of you to do. To really love your Self, to love the Self which is really you. Try standing in front of the mirror and giving love to yourself. Some of you will not be able to do this. I'll bet there are people here who look in the mirror and they don't even want to look at themselves. They can't look at themselves for a whole minute in the mirror. Try it and you'll see what I mean. For when you look in the mirror, see God, not the physical appearance. See light shining from you, see bliss, see pure awareness, see total emptiness, see your Self. Begin to practice this exercise. Looking in the mirror, begin for maybe a minute, then you go on to two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, five minutes. Look at yourself. Admit the truth to yourself. "I am Brahman. I am the ultimate reality. I am boundless space. I am the atman, the perfect intelligence, the one without the other, all-pervading, perfect self." What if you told yourself this everyday? What do you think would happen? If you looked in the mirror and did this every day, you would turn into the God that you are. And you will find peace, total peace, total love.

Keep your mind on God all day - You will not think about your work or the food that you're going to eat during the day or what you're going to wear. But try to keep your mind clear, free. But you will watch yourself. You will see that you get up out of bed. You put on the right clothes. You eat your breakfast like you're supposed to. You go out into the world and do whatever you're supposed to do. But you're not part of it anymore, mentally. Your mind is on God. Your mind is on the absolute reality. Your mind is on perfection. Your mind is still and quiet. Yet you will continue to do what you have to do. You will no longer have to watch the clock or watch space and time. Leave everything alone and everything will happen by itself in a beautiful way. Try it.

Surrender completely - Perfect surrender is when you give up everything, everything to God including your body. Do what you want with me. Do what you want with my body, with my mind, with my affairs, with everything. Not my will but thine. If you can surrender like this you're already free. Try it, it's hard, because you're afraid what will happen after you do that. You believe everything will be taken away from you. This is human thinking. Stop being human. Surrender yourself and become totally free.

Be with your Sage all day long - When you're home, where you're working, think of the Sage. When you think of the sage's form, the sage's name, things will begin to happen to you. Find peace. Try it. Then you will be with the Sage continuously. Whenever you think of a living Sage, the Sage becomes part of your heart, it’s the complete heart and you feel the love of the Sage within you. So if you think of the Sage, the Sage will think of you. Whatever you think about, that you become ultimately. So you have to be very careful what you think about. Whatever you think about, you become. Think of the Sage, you become the Sage.

[mountain-sage]

There is no God to pray to. Brahman is yourself. Shiva is your consciousness. You are that.

What else is there to know? You do not have to be a scholar of the Upanishads. You do not have to memorize various passages. You have to become like a little child and stay centered in the present. No one exists but you. You are the only existence. There is no other existence. If you took this room and everything in it, the tape recorders, the bodies, the flowers, the carpet, and began to melt it down to it's most minutest particles, you would get pure energy from everything. Everything will come from the same source. That source is absolute reality. It is the substratum of all existence. And that source is you. You are that. You are nothing else.

Everything else is a lie. You're searching, and you're striving, and you're looking for this, and you're looking for that. Give it up. Stay put. Do not allow your mind to think past your nose.

Catch your mind. Observe it thinking, and laugh.

ROBERT ADAMS

[thephotoregistry]

Lakewood, Colorado, 1973

Robert Adams

[vesora]

[casadabiqueira]

Summer Nights Walking series

Robert Adams, 1976-82

[agelessphotography]

Longmont, Colorado, Robert Adams, circa 1980

[ndbookstudy]

robert adams, silence of the heart, ch. spiritual practise, pg. 104

some questions for you:

do you have to think?

have you ever wondered where the voice in your head comes from? how it formed? why it's there?

the thoughts just come up, who says you have to identify with them? do you have to claim any thought as 'yours'?

[pierppasolini]

Forbidden Letters (1979) // dir. Arthur J. Bressan, Jr.

[ko-existing]

did the world disappear when you realized yourself? like did you have to rebuild the world entirely from scratch?

False idea—

When you realize "SELF", it's not that the "world" disappears or needs to be rebuilt. "The world" as you once thought you knew it—a separate, external thing—was just an idea within "SELF". "The world" only appears to exists because you are "aware" of it. But when you realize "SELF", you recognize that what you truly are is "SELF" itself, nameless, and that "SELF" doesn’t depend on the world.

What you call "the world" depends on "SELF".

Think of it like this: when you wake up from a dream, you don’t need to rebuild the dream world—the idea that it is Actuality simply vanishes because it was only an idea of the appearing mind. Similarly, when you realize "SELF", you don’t need to rebuild anything.

You simply understand that "the world" arises within "SELF", but "SELF" itself is whole and complete, whether or not the "world" appears within it. Nothing needs fixing because nothing was broken—only misunderstood.

[lotusmi]

''The world is like a reflection in the mirror. Where did the reflection come from? From nowhere because it doesn't really exist. You cannot try to grab the image in the mirror, for you grab the mirror. When you awaken, you understand that you are the mirror. And the reflection of the world is like the water in the mirage, like the snake in the rope, like the sky is blue.

Why does this happen? It doesn't. It appears to happen. Why does it appears to happen? It doesn't. The appearance appears to happen. Why does the appearance appears to happen? It doesn't. It appears to appear to appear to happen. And we can go on like this all night. It is difficult for the human mind to grasp that you are not what you appear to be. This is exactly what we have to do.' Robert Adams

[joeinct]

Eden. Photo by Robert Adams, 1968

[4dkellysworld]

Let go of everything

Every position that you find yourself in, every situation that you find yourself in, with whomever you find yourself, the positions that you have or don’t have, whatever you may be in this world, is your right place at this moment. Bless this, love it. I know it sounds hard when you think of a horrible condition and you say, “I must love it?” Let me explain again. The reason you love it, is because God is all there is. Try to remember this. There is nothing but God. Therefore if you hate something, you’re hating God which is your Self. It’s all coming out of you. You are That. You must learn to trust and love your Self, your precious Self. When you become despondent, depressed, hateful, feeling sorry for yourself, this is what blasphemy really means, for you’re feeling this way about your Self. Can’t you see? There’s only your Self. If you think something is horrible, you’re speaking about your Self. You look at a situation, you watch it, you observe it, you never react, you leave it alone. And then you’ll be given the power that you need to handle it, to go through it, without thinking, without thoughts, without any commotion, without any noise. These are the things you must work on. Be that Self. Never be frightened again by anything. If I can make this perfectly clear to you, never allow anything in this world to ever frighten you. Allow things to unfold as they may. Remember, you just watch and observe. Hold on to the truth. Happiness will come of its own accord. When you hold on to the truth, when you do not react to life’s conditions, person, place or thing, when you leave things alone and you stop fighting life, you’re not giving up. I’m telling you there is nothing to fight. And the only thing you’re giving up is your ego. You’re giving up your body, your ego, your mind. You rise to a higher dimension where there is happiness, peace, compassion, love and joy, that is naturally yours. You begin to feel these things instead of the things you felt before, prior to this, when you were fighting life, when you were sticking up for your rights, when you were trying to get even, when you were working as an ego. Let go of everything. Do not hold on. Stand naked before God, without any crutches, without anything to hold on to. When you can do this, from this moment on you will begin to rise. And you will become aware that you are not the body or the mind or the world or the universe, but you are effortless, choiceless, Pure Awareness. You are boundless space, infinite like the sky. You have become everything, and everything has become you. There comes a time in everyone’s life when they have to stand naked before God. By standing naked I mean no scripture, no fancy words, no preconceived ideas, no spiritual intellectual knowledge. But to be totally naked, in humility and humbleness. Therefore when you can forget about your scripture, forget about everything you’ve learned, and become totally empty, you will then become full.

from Silence of the Heart - Robert Adams