154. Hope keeps us forever spinning, its opposite is effortless and peaceful

Hope. The meaning behind that word is what drives most people to date in their mature or senior years. We hope that we can find the right lover or partner and life will be better than it is. We’re trying to get something we think we don’t have.

Haven’t we been doing that all our lives, though? Can you remember a time when you didn’t think, “This isn’t it, but over there and in the future will be it and then I’ll be happy.” So we look forward to Christmas, to being seven when we’re five, to dating that right boy in high school, to graduation, to marriage, to having children and on and on it goes. Happiness is always in the future. And the future never comes, have you noticed? Hope can never lead to “this is it” because all the time we’re thinking “this is not it” it is. Reality never lies. It just is what is.

“Well,” you might be saying, “if I think that way then everything is totally hopeless.” But isn’t that idea of hope based on the idea that we need something? And is that true? Nisargadatta Maharaj, the late, esteemed spiritual teacher of East India, sometimes said, “I don’t understand wanting what you don’t have. Why not want what you do have and be happy?” And doesn’t that make sense… except that it seems so, well, hopeless?

In many ways, life is like playing the slot machines. If we play long enough we’re bound to win sometimes. Usually it’s just enough to keep us playing. If we never won we’d quit. But sometimes we hit it right and that’s enough to make us forget all the many more times we didn’t hit it right.

In life it’s the same. Once in awhile life happens the way we wanted it to. So we think we did it, and all we have to do is try harder and work harder and we can make it happen our way again. But what’s the reality? Does it usually happen our way, or does it just happen? Look at just today, for example. Did it really turn out the way you thought it would? Doesn’t life just live itself without our input?

When we can’t even say that we create the thoughts that come to us, how can we say we create “our” life? When you look you can’t find any separate, independent individual inside that owns “my” body. Yes this false “me” idea wants dating to turn out a certain way and provide the right circumstances and partner.

There is awareness of life and there’s existence, certainly. But somehow “we” decided that a person exists that’s independent of the rest of nature. It’s a radical thought but have you considered that “we” are simply an expression of that Infinite Intelligence (God) just as is everything else? Does a tree think, or a flower? Yet they function perfectly don’t they, blooming when they’re meant to, sending out perfume and blossoms right on time. “We” function in the same way; we’re being functioned.

There is existence, and that existence is aware of life happening, without an opinion, without judgment, without comparison, without dividing everything into right and wrong, good and bad. In that pure awareness life is just seeing life unfold. The perfect example of that is a small child. A tiny child doesn’t need hope because there’s nothing she wants. She wants what is and that happens to be what she’s always got.

Can we really know we’d be better off having a partner, a lover, a husband or wife, a mate? What’s true instead (remember, reality reigns) is that we don’t need a husband or wife if we don’t have one because life is always exactly the way it should be. The One Intelligence can’t make a mistake because there’s nothing to compare it to since there is no second. There is just the One, showing up in all forms and as all circumstances.

“Then why do you date?” you could ask me. And the answer is, because that’s the way I’m being lived. To me, dating is a great adventure, usually interesting and fun. It would seem nice to have a partner, but I know that’s just a thought. Other times I have the thought that it’s nice to have the peace and contentment of being alone. Do I know what I need? Of course not. So I’m just happy with what is and I find life is contented and peaceful. Nothing can be wrong because there is no right. There is only this… only this, happening right now and in every moment. That’s it and that’s all there ever has been.
Without hope there’s no hopelessness. The only problem is, it’s too simple!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer