9. You're hurting? Question your thoughts

We’re talking about mature dating here. But what we’re really talking about is finding happiness. We think if we have love we’ll be happy. Or if we feel secure and wanted we’ll be happy. We think someone should be there for us on lonely nights or if we get sick, or want a companion to travel with. With these thoughts feelings come up – the emptiness, the longing, the ache in the pit of the stomach. Notice that all these feelings start first with thoughts. We don’t control thoughts; they come unbidden. But when we see that we don’t control them, and therefore we don’t own them, we also don’t need to become attached to them. We see, if we look at our own experience, that they come and go, like a leaf in a stream.

When I’m in a grocery story I often notice babies in the carts of their parents. I’m a father of six kids myself so I have memories of my own small children. What you’ll see, if you watch a baby, is that they’re not affected by the world unless they’re personally uncomfortable – cold, hungry, needing to be changed, etc. You might have heard that the bible quotes Jesus as saying, “Unless you become like little children you won’t enter the kingdom of heaven.” He also said, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” What was he talking about? As I now see life it’s obvious he was saying that unless you simply let the world be as it is, you won’t be able to just be in the heaven within you. Joy and peace is our true nature. We know that when thoughts subside, such as when we’re peacefully watching a sunset or we're totally in the moment holding a baby. But we cover our true nature with all our thoughts about how things “should” be. We want it our way. Babies don’t have that need. They take it as it is.

Of course when we want things our way that means we’re not accepting them the way they are. There’s conflict and resistance. And what do we feel? We suffer. We’re anxious, lonely, jealous, fearful, confused. Yet we really do feel sure that we know how things should be: After all, everyone knows your grown children should be nice to you, your date shouldn’t stand you up, and you should have a partner because you have soooo much love to give. We just know how it should be. But do we really? What's the reality? Are grown children always nice to their parents? Sometimes they're not. That's the way it is, isn't it? If you argue with that reality aren't you always going to lose? Is your "should-ing" about it going to change it? Aren't you going to hurt thinking life shouldn't be the way it is? Maybe our job here is just to relax with “what is”, trusting that higher power and surrendering to life as it is. Maybe our teacher is that next happy, curious, content baby we see, looking wide-eyed and peaceful in that grocery cart.