111. What do you do when your dating sometimes brings hurt?

Dating can sometimes feel like real hell can’t it? As mature daters we’re in a new realm, really. After we’ve become single again and start to think about wanting companionship we realize we’re in completely new territory. Yes, we dated before in our lives but for many of us that was a long time ago.

Actually, dating for mature people is also pretty new territory for society as a whole. It wasn’t too many years ago when people expected that when you were single again after 50 you’d be single until you died. So there’s not a whole lot of history about how to do this successfully. Our first attempts often feel pretty awkward and uncomfortable. What do I say? Do I meet for coffee or lunch? What if she doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like her?

Then as the days, weeks or months pass by we may find ourselves getting emotionally involved with someone. Or we may feel the disappointment of having strong romantic motivations toward someone but the feeling isn’t returned. Any way you look at it, dating at this mature stage of life can bring up a lot of emotions we didn’t even know were there. Emotions like jealousy, anger, disappointment, confusion, fear of being alone, and abandonment. Of course there can be the loving, warm feelings too. But they’re not a problem. What we’re talking about here are the problem feelings, the hurt and suffering dating seems to bring about so often. How do we eliminate this suffering?

One thing I’ve learned is that life dishes out thoughts and feelings at will. We don’t ask for feelings and thoughts and we don’t control them. Have you noticed? We don’t choose our thoughts. In fact, we don’t even choose to think. Thinking happens and we’re not in charge of it. Same with feelings, and we all know it from our own direct experience. That flash of anger or that warm, squishy feeling in the gut – those just show up don’t they?

So as we date it’s probably wise to expect that life will bring some storms of emotions just like it brings some storms of weather. Emotions are constantly swirling through our awareness. Actually, emotions are simply sensations in our body. These sensations are what we call emotions, and we put labels on them, such as anger or loneliness. Without labels they’re just sensations – maybe a hot surge in the gut or an exploding feeling in the head.

But while there’s nothing we can do about thoughts and emotions, and they’ll come when they come, there is a way of seeing life that pretty much wipes out the suffering. With a little investigation we can see that there’s something separate from all the suffering that knows suffering is there. That pure awareness – or we could call it being – is never affected by what’s passing through the mind as thoughts or the body as emotions. But that knowingness is so subtle we usually don’t notice it.

Instead, nearly always when we’re suffering we’ve got our attention locked on getting our feelings and thoughts to line up the way we want them to, and getting the world to be the way we want it to be. But the answer is never “out there”, it’s always “in here”. When you start to look you’ll see that all the suffering comes from our thoughts and beliefs about how we want life to be rather than just seeing the way it is.

An animal, on the other hand, or a small baby, without the same power of thought we have, is just being in life. There’s awareness of life without an opinion about it, and even without any labels. The animal or baby just sees and accepts the suchness of life as it is. Consequently there’s little emotional suffering.

Beingness or awareness or a witnessing consciousness is who we are. It’s the knowingness that we’re here. No one can deny their existence. And that beingness or amness is never affected by the thoughts and emotions that appear. It’s like the screen is never affected by the movie appearing on it. It never gets wet in a movie flood or burns in a movie fire. Space is another example of this isness. Space just is and it’s never tainted in the slightest by the happenings that appear in it.

When you get caught up in thoughts and their feelings it’s like being in a mixing machine; you’re tossed around like a rag doll. When you simply notice that all along life has been happening just as it does, you can begin to let go of how “you” think it should be. Nothing that’s happening to you is happening for the first time. Just like a wave washing ashore isn’t happening for the first time. That’s what waves do. Emotions do the same thing; they come and go.

But we can just be the ocean, never affected by a temporary wave, by simply witnessing life as it is, without trying to change it or improve it so we can feel better. That’s a hopeless cause because we have no control over life. Our true nature isn’t an independent, frightened little person fighting to make life work. Our true nature is simply the pure awareness or beingness that is all of life. This awareness that we are is self-knowing, just as the sun is self-shining. You’re aware and you know you’re aware. That’s all you need to know in any moment. You don’t need a judgment about how life should be, including how your own emotions should be. The next moment will take care of itself as it always has.

When you’re hurting that hurt is really a gift, a little ringing bell saying, “Your thinking is off.” As you watch you’ll see that all your emotional suffering comes from thought. Furthermore, those thoughts are always thoughts of resistance. We don’t want what is. We want it our way instead. But do we really know that what’s happening should be different? Maybe we’ll notice we’re not running this show after all.

Maybe we’ll even notice there is no little me here at all. That idea of a separate me is just a thought, an idea. When you see that, you can relax into just watching life as it is. You don’t have to believe what I’m saying. Your own direct experience will confirm it if look openly. Living from your natural state of beingness or awareness you can just have fun with your dating. Watch the flowering of life in the presence of now and be happy. Even if painful feelings show up, notice they pass on through quickly when you don’t attach to them, fight them or think they should be different. Everything is as it is. That’s just the way it is. This is it!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer