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

110. When you don’t need dating to meet your expectations you can freely relax and have fun

As we date, in the hope of finding a relationship for the rest of our lives, many of us have a sense of an incomplete me hoping to find completion. There’s a hole in our lives and we want to fill it. So there’s a real attachment to the desire to find a mate that will make us always happy. But the truth is that never happens. Why? Because the ego-me always has conflicting desires and impulses. It’s the nature of the mind to divide all things into their opposites: good/bad, happy/sad, right/wrong, together/separate, complete/incomplete, fulfilled/unfulfilled, worthy/unworthy. The mind is all about judging, pitting one thing against another

So once we find the right partner it probably won’t be long before we realize we also want independence, or maybe there’s a desire to be with a different person. Then we want togetherness again. Perhaps there’s a spat between us and we again want to be alone. So dissatisfaction is built into the very game of relationship, as it is with life. We get a new car or TV and it satisfies us for a short time. But then that longing for something new, better, different shows up again. We start comparing and judging and we’re off on another search to satisfy our unhappiness. It’s never-ending.

Basically our sense of longing is always born out of the deep realization that this isn’t it. At this age we might have begun to realize that nothing seems to be it. Nothing is deeply satisfying and we know from having tried all kinds of things all our lives that we’re not going to get there, though we keep trying for something – anything – that will ease that quiet desperation. All the ways make us more comfortable for a short time but they don’t make us ultimately peaceful.

So is there a solution? Good news -- yes there is! The solution is the one spiritually enlightened masters have pointed out for eons. The solution is to see that the little me that thinks it needs more, bigger, better, faster is just a thought. Me is nothing more than an idea. It’s not real. After all, where do you find this me? Is it your body? It couldn’t be, because your body is nothing without that Essence that gives it life. Besides, it’s always changing.

Is it your mind or thoughts? No, what you call me isn’t there either because those thoughts couldn’t even exist if it weren’t for the livingness or Life Essence. Besides our beliefs and even our image of ourselves as me is always changing. So how real could it be?

So where is me? The truth is there isn’t an independent “someone” we can call me. What we call me has no independent nature at all. It’s just an expression of the Life Essence or Spirit or the One, like everything else is. Me is just an idea, a thought that we’ve been conditioned to believe.

So what is this thing I call me? It must be that sense of beingness, of present awareness that we’ve always known and that has never changed. That sense that allows us to say I am. No one can deny that they are. We know we exist, and that knowing has never changed from the time we can first remember until now. It’s the only constant that we can know without thinking and without relying on anyone for confirmation.

Just by looking we see that we are that Life Force, that Presence, that Beingness that everything else is. A tree is that Essence being a tree. A rose is that Essence being a rose. A human is that Essence being a human. It’s all the same being. We must actually be that Life Essence, that Oneness that gives life and beingness to all that exists. That’s what the sages have said through all the centuries and from every corner of the earth. It was the message of Christ and the Buddha. The one thing we can be certain of is that "knowing" that we are, that we exist. Everything else we think about ourselves is just thought, including the thought that I'm a separate, limited entity that has to struggle to survive and make life work. Christ obviously knew that when he said, "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?" He went on to talk about how the flowers and birds are taken care of without strain and worry.

And Buddha is quoted as having said, "The deed there is but no doer thereof." We think we’re the doers of life but a close inspection shows that isn’t true. We don’t need the thought, “I want to see” before seeing happens, or “I want to hear” before hearing happens, or “I want to think” before thinking happens. These all happen by themselves, just like our digestion and heart beating and breathing. We don’t start it and we can’t stop it. If you think you can, try to switch off your thoughts when you’re in turmoil and want to give yourself a rest.

As radical as it sounds, we’re “being lived” and when you see this, life simply becomes a matter of relaxing into what is, just as it is. Thoughts of improving and having a better life seem to happen to a me. But actually they just show up out of nowhere, like bubbles in soda, and we don’t need to pay attention to them at all when we see that there’s no me to get attached to them. They promise a hope and fulfillment that’s not real because the world “out there” can never bring lasting contentment. The world, in fact, is only energy vibrating in different patterns that take different apparent forms. But it’s all just One stuff, pretending to be different.

Seeing that we’re being lived just like everything in the universe is being lived will bring us the relaxing, no-problem, happy life we’re seeking. Then dating is something that happens naturally; it's what this character you call me is moved to do, just as you’re moved to eat spaghetti or salmon for supper tonight. Watching life move as it does means your dating can be lighthearted fun as you witness the One play out this game. Dating doesn’t have to meet your goals or conform to your expectations when you see there is no me to have goals and expectations. The “doing” of life happens through an instrument we call me. Have no attachment to preferences and you’ll have no problems.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

109. Happy mature dating can be summed up in a few words: When it rains I let it

When we know what mature dating should look like and what our experiences in dating should be like, we’re going to suffer. Actually, that’s true of all of life, of course. We don’t know how it should be. So dating is easier and more of a lighthearted, playful, relaxed adventure when we can just watch how it is.

There was an item in a book I was reading the other day where a guy from Florida was saying to a group that when he catches a cockroach in his house he prays for it then kills it. The group laughed, of course. Then he went on: “One day I caught a cockroach and I threw it outside so it could live. In a second or two a lizard come out and ate it!”

Another man in the group said obviously that was good for the lizard and bad for the cockroach. He went on to recount how when he was in India he gave money to one beggar and not to another. Why? It just happens that way, he said. I’ve had the same experience in giving money to a homeless person. I give to one person and not to another. Why? The mind can come up with answers but deep down we all realize we really don’t know. Some years ago I was with a spiritual teacher Rajiv Misra from India one day and asked him about that. His answer was, “When it’s his money you’ll give it to him.” And reality says that’s true. When I give him money it’s no longer mine.

My friend Byron Katie tells the story of her house being robbed once. Her ex-husband was very upset but she was telling him, “It obviously wasn’t our stuff any longer. How do we know? We don’t own it any more. They do.” Life lives under its own rules and when we don’t fight them we live comfortably and at ease. We can simply be present to the moment – the way life is. Sometimes we’d call it good and sometimes we’d call it bad. But without labels it’s just what it is.

Dating in these later years of life can often be the birthplace for a lot of stress, disappointment and hurt. We want what we want when we want it, and we’re not happy when we don’t get it. In short, we want a loving, wonderful partner… NOW! But how do we know what should happen? The guy who threw the cockroach out of his home obviously thought it should have a chance to live. Nature, on the other hand, had its own idea. Nature obviously thought the lizard needed a meal.

When we give up the idea that we know how our lives should be, and just follow the obvious and percolate along in the mystery of life we don’t have problems. The Beloved seems to know what it’s doing. If we want to know what should happen, all we have to do is look and see what’s happening. It’s only when our judgments come in about how dating should be that we’re in misery. I have a little sign on my refrigerator that sums this all up in just a few words. It says, “When it rains I let it.”

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

108. Do you scream and kick in “adult” forms when you don’t get your way?

Little kids will often go into a rant, scream, stomp their feet and generally make a ruckus when they don’t get their way. But have you ever considered that that’s also how many adults behave when we don’t get our way in the world of romance? For adults the result is called emotional suffering. Even as mature adults we often do the same thing as kids, but in a different form. Adults may also scream, or their expression of unhappiness may take a seemingly more sophisticated form such as silentseething, manipulating by not communicating, using unkind labels and names, and various other forms of emotional or even physical violence and blackmail.

Here’s an example of how it works. Carolyn thinks her date Jim is “too friendly” to Janey at a party. Carolyn doesn’t want him being friendly with another woman and she lets him know by sulking, blaming and pouting. Put another way, Carolyn doesn’t like not getting her way. “Her way” is to have Jim not being friendly to women. She’s telling him, in effect, “I don’t want you to live your life your way, I want you to drop that and start living your life the way I tell you to.”

When we hurt emotionally it’s virtually always because we’re resisting something. We’re arguing with “what is” and think it should be “what I want” instead. As a result we suffer all kinds of emotional turmoil and upset, including sadness, anger, jealousy, loneliness, etc. Life, on the other hand, just happens as it does, including our dating lives. Instead of holding onto our beliefs about how life should be and then getting upset when it isn’t that way, it’s much easier I’ve found to simply go along with life since it’s not going to change whether we’re upset or not. Have you noticed that?

In the example above, Jim has the right to talk or even flirt with anyone he wants to, just as Carolyn has. After all, would she want Jim telling her how she has to behave? Of course Carolyn also has the right to choose not to be with Jim too.

You may be thinking, “Yeah, but if she loves the guy she doesn’t want to lose him. No wonder she’d be jealous.” But again, when we think life has to be our way (Jim should be with me and not be friendly to other women) we’re going to hurt when it isn’t. Carolyn wouldn’t have to hurt if she weren’t attached to having things her way, and instead noticed that what’s happening is just what’s happening. Christ said “Know the truth and the truth will set you free.” It seems clear to me that he was talking about seeing the reality of life as it is, not as we think it should be. The reality in this case was that Jim was talking to Janey. What that meant to Carolyn was all her own story, based on her judgments and interpretations.

It’s easy for us to build dream castles of a life together with someone, and we don’t like to see them shattered. But when we let go of our attachment to having life be our way we can more easily just roll with what is. Then there’s room for adventure, playfulness and discovery in this mature dating world. Or… we can hold onto wanting life to be our way and figurately scream and kick and suffer. When the dust settles though we’ll see that “what is” is still just what is. It didn’t notice our kicking and screaming.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

107. “Why?” may be the wrong question but “what?” can lead you to dating ease

There may come times when you want to investigate your own behavior in a relationship that’s causing you to suffer. Harry says something and you immediately feel hurt and get defensive. You may intuitively know it’s not Harry’s fault that you feel hurt. Something inside just got triggered and hurt rushed in, unbidden and unwanted.

The tendency for most of us, I’ve learned, is to start asking ourselves why. Why am I hurt so easily? Why do I get so angry and defensive? Why did I have a mother who was so critical and made me feel worthless when I was small? Why do those same feelings come up that used to come up with my late wife when we had a problem?

Unfortunately, “why” questions always keep us stuck in a psychological morass. They keep us going in circles of self-recrimination and self-denial – often based on an ego-me that wants to be right. We start trying to find ways to force ourselves to remain calm in the future through will power. Yet, we’ve probably all seen that will power doesn’t work. If it did, we’d have had the problem solved long ago.

There is a question that works, however, and will lead to reality and peace. That question is “what?”. What happened? Just that. Very simply, what happened? Without our twist on it, without our spin, without adding how we think it should have been, what happened? When there’s clear understanding of reality as it is, without our judgment, the problem we thought we had dissolves on its own. It’s like going to the lake to get a bucket of blue water. Once we see that it’s not blue, even when it appears to be, we don’t need will power not to take our bucket to the lake again. Understanding pierces through the illusion and we never try for blue water again.

It’s the same in any situation when you’re hurt. Harry said some words and without our judgment of them or him where can there be a problem? Just like there can be no problem with a pink tulip – unless we think it should be yellow. Then there’s a problem. So “what” is a useful question. What is the truth here? What do I think should be my way instead of the way it is? Do I know that for sure? What’s my life like when I think I have all the answers to this matter? Do I really have the big picture and know on a larger, long-term scale what’s best? Is it possible the Universe is playing itself out perfectly, just because it is? What would my life be like if I didn’t have that belief that’s causing me to hurt? When we see things as they are we realize it’s crazy to argue with reality. And “what is” is always the reality.

[If you’d like a more thorough way of investigating reality to get out of suffering see Article #19 in the November 27, 2005 archives in this blog or go to www.thework.com and read about Byron Katie’s simple method called The Work.]

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

106. It’s never your partner’s fault if you’re suffering in your relationship

When a relationship has problems the other person is never the cause. I know that may sound crazy but stick with me a minute. First of all, I’m not asking you to believe me. Instead I’d ask you to look at your own direct experience. How do you know when you’re having a problem in a relationship?... you’re suffering. You’re hurting in some way. Your partner may be hurting too, in which case you’ve both got a problem. But the relationship as such can’t have a problem because relationship is just a word, not an entity. It’s just a thought.

So you know you’ve got a problem when you’re hurting. It’s not a relationship problem, it’s a “you” problem. You may also feel that the problem is caused by your partner. If he hadn’t said what he did or if she hadn’t done what she did, you wouldn’t be hurting. But is that true?

Let’s look at it this way. If your partner said the same words to someone else that are hurting you would they necessarily be hurting? No. So it’s not the words that are causing your hurt, it’s your interpretation of what those words mean to you that cause your suffering. In other words, whenever we’re hurting emotionally it’s all about us and has nothing to do with the other person. Yes, they may trigger thoughts in us, but the thoughts are the cause of our pain, not the trigger. Two people could hear a person say the same sentence and one may think it was funny while the other thinks it was sarcastic. Is either person right? No, not really. The actual reality is that some words were said. The judgment or interpretation was added by the listeners.

It’s always that way about everything in life. We project onto it what we believe and then live as though our belief is true. Often it isn’t. Some years ago I had a friend who dated regularly but didn’t really enjoy it. She often said, “It’s brutal out there.” That was her judgment. For me dating was always an interesting adventure. It didn’t seem brutal at all. Different interpretations of basically the same experience.

If you think your partner shouldn’t have behaved in the way she did you’re immediately suffering because you’re resisting what is, just as if you thought it shouldn’t be raining when it is. Whenever you resist reality you lose and you suffer. “What is” doesn’t care what you think. On the other hand, if you see that your partner just behaved the way she did, and you don’t add a judgment to that, there’s nothing to be hurt about. After all, don’t you have the right to behave the way you want to? Doesn’t she also? You don’t have to make her wrong or try to force her to change. All you really need to do is find someone else to be with if you can’t accept what she does.

Your partner is never your problem. Partners have no power to get into our minds and emotions and create pain-thoughts. Only we have that power. Life is the way it is. Flowers bloom when they’re supposed to. It rains when it’s supposed to. Your partner does what he’s supposed to and so do you. I don’t mean “supposed to” in a moral sense, just in a “what is” sense. What is, is. There are no mistakes. It’s all the wonderful mystery of the Beloved manifesting exactly as it’s meant to manifest. Seeing that, you can relax and take life with ease, relishing the wonder and glory of it all, just as it is. Have fun!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer