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

92. When you’re a robot you destroy relationships and your own peace

When your VCR or your oven is programmed it can only function according to the instructions it’s been given. It has no choice. Click one button and it just goes through its programmed steps automatically. That’s functional and useful when we don’t want to spell out instructions to the machine each time we use it.

That same kind of programming in you isn’t so functional in your life, however. You may not even be aware of your own programming until you’re dating, or in a relationship, however. Then all hell can break loose. What’s functional in a piece of equipment is usually extremely disfunctional in our personal lives. But amazingly the method works the same way, whether it’s a piece of equipment or a human being.

The programming for many of us has happened in childhood, when we were innocent and simply doing what we could to survive, both physically and emotionally. We used the best tools we knew at the time and sometimes they worked. We might have been mad at Mom so we sulked in the corner and wouldn’t speak to her. Mom might have given in and we got what we wanted. So it worked. We all know hundreds of examples of this kind of manipulation or self-protective behavior we used when we felt vulnerable and powerless.

You’ve probably been in relationships in the past and noticed that your partner could push the buttons that would bring on those same feelings of vulnerability and powerlessness. Now, as you’re dating again as a mature man or woman you’d think most of us have gotten beyond these fear-caused flareups. But it isn’t true. An event today can trigger those same childhood, programmed responses that popped up automatically in the past. The funny thing is that our reaction often has very little to do with the current event and nearly everything to do with the memories programmed into us years earlier. In fact, in those circumstances we’re like a robot. The button gets pushed, we go through our programmed routine and then when we’ve finally settled down we often notice with astonishment that we were behaving just as we did when we were five, only in a mature body. Whew!

Relationships can end with blowups like this and you might actually be feeling it’s all the other person’s fault. If they just hadn’t done or said what they did you wouldn’t have reacted this way. So you move on to the next relationship and – oh my god! – the same thing happens. Different circumstances, different buttons being pushed, different behavior and words, but same kind of reaction. In fact, it feels the same inside you; you’re hot, your palms are sweaty, your stomach is churning. Same ol’ stuff! You might start to notice, you have no more freedom than that VCR or a robot.

So you’re stuck! Or are you? Let’s say you’ve noticed that someone else in the same circumstances didn’t react at all. I have a friend who was talking to neighbors recently. The husband said something to his wife that triggered hot feelings in my friend. She thought he was rude. His wife, however, responded calmly and without apparent anger. Apparently nothing got triggered in her; there was no programming.

There’s one simple key to all this and it can be stated in one word: Thought. Somewhere between a behavior or word trigger and your robotic flareup in response to it there’s a brief gap. And that gap is where your thought pops in. It’s here where you could be self-aware instead of letting the conditioning or programming take over. You could ask yourself, for instance, if you’re certain you really know the truth about the situation. Is the response you’re about to boom out with really based on knowing reality? Or is it based on the story you’ve added to the situation?

To stop in that gap between the happening and your response to it you have to be conscious, in the moment, present. In that presence you have the chance to notice whether or not you really know what you’re doing. Or you can be on automatic and watch yourself destroy relationships and your own peace and happiness.

A final note: You may not always be able to catch yourself in the “heat of the battle” as they say. But you can always review any situation later and inquire enough inside you to see that you may have added your own story to simple facts. Bringing yourself to honesty and awareness in that way eventually leads to inquiring in the moment of a happening. With that sort of investigation it doesn’t take long until you’re free. You’re no longer run like a dummy by your programmed thoughts. All that programming has only ever been nothing more than thought. But isn’t it amazingly powerful when we don’t stop to question and see the truth?

SEE ARTICLE #19 FOR A POWERFUL METHOD OF SEEING REALITY WITHOUT A STORY

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

91. Forget the meaning of dating and relationships and just relax into what is

As we’ve gotten a little older (notice I said a little!) we tend to think we’ve also gotten a lot wiser. As we date now in these mature years we have a better sense of what we want and what we can expect from people than we did when we were younger and less experienced. Unfortunately, it’s the very idea that we think we know, or should know, that often causes us the most pain in dating.

Some years ago I was friendly with a woman who was dating and falling much in love with a local dentist. Mary Ann was getting to know his children and family and saw a bright future for herself with him as her husband. He was bright, wealthy, handsome and just the right man. Then she discovered that he had also been dating other women. She was devastated. Why, she wanted to know, would this happen? Why would a man she trusted be so deceitful? She agonized over this for months. She wanted reasons. She wanted answers. She couldn’t let go of it.

But living life as it is doesn’t provide answers. We really have to learn to live in the “not knowing”, in the mystery of life as it shows up. That “why” question can be our downfall. We’ve been conditioned to think there’s got to be an answer. We think meaning would somehow bring us security. We’d have something stable to hang on to, a sense that we’re not just dangling, that we know how life works. We want all the pieces of the puzzle to fit. So we put in a lot of energy and struggle trying to find that meaning.

The reality of life, though, is that it doesn’t really have meaning except the meaning we give it. When we stop trying to find answers we may be able to relax and just see that life is what happens, and it doesn’t need to make sense to us. We can allow it to be just the way it is. It may look like chaos and we may feel bereft and beleaguered as though we’re hanging in space and not knowing what to do. When we just do the next logical thing in front of us though, the fear of insecurity is gone.

When you look you’ll see that life usually doesn’t turn out the way we expected. Many of us weren’t in the career we thought we’d be in, we didn’t expect to be single at this stage of our lives, we had more or fewer childen than we thought we’d have, and so on. As I’ve said before in these essays, life doesn’t ask for our opinion.

We think all should make sense to “us”, as though we could see from a large enough perspective. We think it should mean what we want it to mean. But think about this: We’re totally OK with life not having meaning in many ways. What meaning does music have? We don’t have to try to figure that out. What meaning is there in going dancing? Is there meaning to a mountain? Or a snow storm? Or the ebb and flow of the tides?

If everything is allowed to be just what it is, you’ll notice that its energy just moves and flows, as it will, whether we’re trying to figure it out or not.

I’m reminded of the children’s story:
Little Bo-peep has lost her sheep and doesn’t know where to find them.
Leave them alone and they’ll come home, wagging their tails behind them.

The pain of an ending relationship, if seen simply as “what is”, will take care of itself when we leave it alone and stop struggling with its meaning. We can be willing to simply rest in the unknowing (leave them alone) and see that life continues to unfold its own way. The struggle (that was only mind-made in the first place) is over.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

90. Without opinions and judgments happiness in mature dating is easy

Since we were very young we’ve been programmed to think that when we get what we want we’ll be happy. Even in the face of the lie that actual living shows that belief to be, we still somehow think that’s how life works: “Get what I want and I’m happy. Don’t get what I want and I’m unhappy.” In the case of being single in these mature years we often think we need a partner or a mate to be happy.

Yes the Wise Ones throughout the centuries have told us the opposite. An ancient and revered Chinese spiritual text of the 14th century, is called the Hsin-hsin Ming, or The Mind of Absolute Trust. It’s several pages long and written in the form of short statements about how to live an awakened or enlightened life of contentment

The very first statement of this honored writing says this: “The Great Way is not difficult for those not attached to preferences.” What the author is obviously saying is that when we simply see the reality of life as it is, when we don’t think it should be “our” way instead of the way it is, we’re at ease with life.

He goes on in other parts of the text to say, “To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.” And, “When one is free from attachment, all things are as they are and there is neither coming nor going. When in harmony with the nature of things, your own fundamental nature, you will walk freely and undisturbed.”

So let’s take a look at this ancient wisdom in terms of mature dating. Can that understanding from centuries ago apply to the day-to-day disappointments, frustrations and psychological hurts of seeking a new mate at this stage of life? For me, the answer has been a definite Yes. Here’s why. Most of my life I lived with the belief that things should go my way. If they didn’t I was unhappy, sometimes in deep pain. After all, I shouldn’t have been divorced, I was a good husband and father. I shouldn’t have been widowed, I had a beautiful second marriage and I should have been able to enjoy Karen’s warmth and love into old age.

Now I’ve been single more than 11 years when I thought I’d be in a new marriage within a few years. Many friends have been divorced or widowed in those years and they’re coupled with a new mate already. What’s wrong?

Well, what I’ve now learned, after following the pointers of those Wise Ones from the past and today, is that nothing is wrong. Life simply lives itself and we as humans are part of the expression of that One Essence that shows up as everything that is. That Intelligence Energy or Supreme Power keeps the solar systems in place as well as beating my heart and breathing my lungs. It (God is a word many use) obviously knows what It’s doing, even when from our self-centered viewpoint It appears not to. Seeing that, it’s now easy for me to see that if I was supposed to have a new spouse now I would.

So, applied to senior dating here’s the bottom line. What’s supposed to happen is happening, not because it’s “supposed to” for some righteous or moral reason but “supposed to” because it IS. For you and me it’s simply a matter of seeing reality as it is, to begin to find more peace and happiness in our lives. In truth there is no “you” and “me”. Instead, there’s just a body that was brought into existence and is being lived AS an apparent individual. It’s that false notion of being a separate individual that causes us to hurt because we take the thoughts that show up for all of us, and try to make them our own. We add our opinions and judgments – judgments that argue with “what is”. The moment we argue with what already is we hurt.

Someone ended a relationship with you? That’s The Power expressing Itself that way. You haven’t found the right partner yet? That’s The Power expressing Itself that way. A tornado ripped through a neighborhood and killed 87 people? That’s The Power expressing itself that way. What else could it be? When surrendering to “what is” happens then we simply see Life as it is. And when we’re not arguing with Life and fighting reality we’re in the place of being fully present to every experience as it happens, whether it’s relishing the smell of a rose or fully devouring the delicious taste of a tender kiss.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

89. You can wait for happiness or be happy, even without a partner

[I’ve been on another project so that’s why my articles stopped for awhile. Thanks for your patience. - Chuck]

Yesterday I was talking to a friend who’s husband had died five years. “We worked hard all our lives and we were looking forward to retirement so we could do some traveling and enjoy things together. But then he died before that time came and we never got to do it. I wish we hadn’t waited,” she said.

Waiting to really live didn’t pay off. They postponed living, always expecting the future would be better than it is now. “When we retire...” they said. But how many single people do the same thing – postpone happiness while they wait for the right mate. “When I find the right partner......then I’ll be happy.” So they wait for a happiness that can never come in the future because living is only now, in this moment. The future is always a projected Now, and the mind’s shenanigans will always make it look better than this Now.

So as we wait for that future happiness we remain miserable, lonely, always longing. There’s another way. Why not learn to look into this moment and its joys, to be grateful and happy for this moment, the only moment you’re living anyway? Why argue with this moment by thinking it’s not good enough and some future will be better? Why not, instead, accept this moment and be happy now? Chances are good you’d be a lot more attractive person to a potential mate if you were happy now instead of always having some part of you tied up with the longing and the aching for that perfect Mr. or Ms. Right.

I’ve said for a long time that having another partner would be frosting on the cake. But I have to be my own cake. When you’re the cake instead of looking for someone else to be the cake for you, you’re free. Free from the longing. Free from needing someone, which leads to clinging and jealousy, the very behavior that’ll push a potential mate away. Living now is simply being present to life as it is.

Waiting is another way to say you’ve stopped living. You’re not enjoying the moment, just going through the motions while that nagging negativity runs in the background, coloring every aspect of your life. We don’t seem to notice that any “future” we dreamed of – that now has come and gone – never made life better for more than a very short time.

Take a look at your whole life. Look at all the things in the past that you thought were going to make you happy – getting a new car, house, husband, or getting the kids out of the house, getting rid of a mate, dating that right guy or gal. Did any of those things bring you lasting happiness? “No,” you say, “but give me another few months and they will, this time.”

Meantime, what you’re doing is called existing. It’s not living. That existing has no passion, no flair, no zest, no presence to it. You’re going through the motions of life but not really living. And you know it. You don’t have to look very deep inside to say, “Yes, my life is just a dull sameness. No matter what activity I’m involved with there’s always that undercurrent of nagging unhappiness and misery.” There’s no freshness in that, no taste of joy, it’s just existing, in a constant state of unhappiness and misery. Not a piercing pain, just a dull sense of unease that can be so subtle you even mask it from yourself.

It’s easy to know when you’re living only for the future. How? You can feel it. It’s that gnawing feeling of loneliness, sadness, despair, even mild or sometimes major panic: “This isn’t good enough. This isn’t the way I’d planned it. Life isn’t going the way I wanted. I have to work harder, be better, figure out more ways to be attractive? Then, I’ll find the right person and then I’ll be happy!”

What about being happy now? What about noticing all the things you have to be grateful for now, and living in that? What about just living in this moment, being fully present to what is? Is it really true that a new partner would make life better? Can you know that for sure? Reality is that it’s just not meant to be for you right now. You know that because it’s the way it is. Deal with reality and not your “little me” desires and fantasies and you may notice that life is good already.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer