84. Without interpreting and judging, mature dating is an easy adventure

When we put labels on things, and judge them from a self-centered viewpoint, we usually cause ourselves a lot of pain. A simple example would be this. John has dated Mary a couple of times, then she tells him she doesn’t want to continue. John could interpret that from a self-centered perspective and feel hurt, telling himself all kinds of stories such as “she should have given herself a chance to really know me,” or “I shouldn’t have told her so much about my background.” Or he could see things as they are – Mary doesn’t want to date him any more – and simply accept that as the way it is. No story, no pain. After all, can he really know his interpretation of Mary’s action is right? Can he know he shouldn’t have revealed his background? If he really digs into it he’ll probably see that he can’t know those things at all. That’s just the mind trying to answer the question “why”?

The Tao Te Ching is a Chinese spiritual work from the time before Christ, consisting of 81 short verses of wisdom. It’s a classic that’s widely revered for the clear understanding of life it expresses, though at first some of its meanings may be hard to grasp. Its wise words apply to all of life, and in this case to the experiences we have in mature dating as well. Depending on our viewpoint we can have fun, happy experiences, or pain, as we date.

The mind is good at dividing and labeling, and with our thought-generated interpretations we suffer. Here’s an example of what the Tao Te Ching says about that:

When everyone recognizes beauty as beauty there is already ugliness.
When everyone recognizes goodness as good there is already evil.

In other words, we live in a world of duality – right/wrong, good/bad, beauty/ugly – when we label things. As soon as we say something is “good” we’ve automatically created something “not good”. If it had no opposite, there would be no “good”, only “what is”, which is what you’ve got without the label we put on things.

Later in the Tao Te Ching, author Lao Tzu says:

The nameless is the origin of heaven and earth.
Naming (the mind) is the mother of the ten thousand things.

You could call the “nameless” the Source of all that is, or the Absolute, or God (the God of your understanding). What Lao Tzu is saying is this: Without labels, things are as they are, simply originated from that One Source, which he calls the nameless. Then the mind (naming) comes in, and now we’ve got labels for everything. The labels, of course, are usually based on “I like” or “I don’t like”. Or we interpret: “She doesn’t want to date me any more and that means… (here we add whatever meaning our mind comes up with).

But without labeling, interpreting and judging, a fact is just a fact, just like rain is just rain. Rain isn’t good or bad, it just IS. How do you get past the idea of labeling and judging everything? By becoming self-aware. By just noticing – when you’re feeling emotionally hurt – what your thoughts are. You’ll notice you’re resisting something “as it is”. What do you think should be “your” way rather than the way it is? Do “you” really know what should be? Is it possible that “what is” is the perfect unfolding of this Infinite Intelligence and we’re just so small we don’t see the big picture? Do we think we know more than God?

Reality, without our label and story, isn’t painful. The only suffering comes when we don’t accept reality just as it is. Eventually you may see that there’s not even a “you” to make a judgment – that “you” is just another one of the objects of life. The One Infinite Source is just pretending to be “you” for awhile, as it pretends to be a tree, a thought and the wind.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer