93. To crave is to slave, in mature dating as well as in life

The late East Indian sage, Nisargadatta Maharaj, used to say: “To crave is to slave.” He was talking about being a slave to our desires. When we want something we’re, in effect, saying we’re not happy now, with what we have. So we’re putting our happiness in the future, and though we slave for it that future virtually never comes. Oh yes, it may show up for short periods after we get what we wanted, but that fulfillment is short-lived, as we all know. Then we’re back on the wheel again, like the rat or hamster in a cage, chasing, chasing, chasing – slaving, slaving, slaving.

I was reminded this morning of how we so easily make pain for ourselves by “wanting” a relationship, when I got a short email from a friend, a woman in her mid-60s, discussing an on-again, off-again relationship she has with a man. “He keeps me guessing, always dangling,” she said. “He says I’m his best friend and he really respects me but it never goes any further than that.” It’s the same story I’ve heard from her before, with the same guy. This guy clearly says he wants her for his friend. She, however, continues to want to make him her romantic partner. Reality seems to elude her – the reality of seeing what is just as it is, in this case his intention to have only a friendship.

There’s a pattern to life, and we’re part of that pattern, the sages tell us. Yet we don’t see it. We think we know how things should be rather than accepting them as they are. A Dutch author, Hella Haasse, uses this metaphor: If you knew how to weave you would understand what I am saying. The underside where all the threads are wound and twisted around each other, is no less real than the side we habitually call good that has neat figures stitch by stitch, color next to color. In other words, what we might see as chaos in life that we think should be changed, we may also see as the perfect pattern if we only had another view. That could give us a lot of peace and contentment.

Nisargadatta says, “At every moment whatever comes to you unasked comes from God and will surely help you if you make the fullest use of it. It is only what you strive for, out of your own imagination and desire, that gives you trouble.” But, you might ask, how do I not want a partner at this stage of my life? The only answer seems to be in looking at the content of our minds. What do we think about most of the time? Usually we’re so busy with our own little desires that we don’t have the space to see the beauty and pattern of life as it actually is. All we can see is that it isn’t the way we think it’s supposed to be.

My friend’s desire for more than a friendship causes her unending pain that’s always in the background of her life. Yet desires are just thoughts. When we let them come and go without clinging to them, free from expectation and wanting, we’re in a place where discovery can happen. It’s what you might call surrender, or acceptance, and it takes courage. We have to give up what we know and just be.

Our true nature is pure awareness; it’s like a mirror, clear and empty – immovable. Images are placed before it and the images change. But the mirror – the pure awareness of life – never changes. That awareness is who we are, that sense of “I am” or “beingness”. All that happens in life shows up in that awareness and the happenings may appear jumbled, like the back side of a quilt. But the awareness we are is never affected, any more than the mirror is affected by the images that show up and disappear in it.

That emptiness, seeing life just as it is, is our true nature and it’s where we find peace and happiness. In that witnessing awareness we simply let life happen as it happens, without adding our story or thinking it should be different.

At first watching life with dispassion may seem empty. We’re so used to the turmoil and hustle of life that the stillness of just being can seem dead. But if we stay with it for a bit we begin to see the subtle contentment of life without desire and fear. Life then becomes the inner adventure of noticing the mystery and beauty that was always there but covered by our frantic seeking, always seeking. “Be nothing, know nothing, have nothing. This is the only life worth living, the only happiness worth having,” Nisargadatta says.

It’s a life of just being, free from the obsession with “what’s next?” In being there is no next. It’s about presence instead, just seeing that you are the silent background on which thoughts and emotions show up and disappear. In that silence you may hear something that’s too fine and subtle to hear otherwise. When you’re not slaving to fill your need for a partner –when you’re just happily being yourself – you can just date and have fun. Strangely enough, you inadvertently become the person that an emotionally mature and healthy man or woman would just naturally want to be with. Then, if a relationship is in the cards for you, you’re ripe for it. But you’re not dependent on it. Either way you’re happy.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer