150. When “you” aren’t running the show dating is easy and stress-free

Let’s face it. Most people in the mature or senior age bracket would rather not be dating. Most would rather have a partnership that feels secure and comfortable. Dating is often a stressful concern: Will I find someone to spend the rest of my years with? Will I be emotionally hurt? How do I look and what do I say to attract the right person? That’s what I’d call suffering.

Fortunately, a lot of the emotional suffering in mature dating, and in life, doesn’t need to happen when we see life in the reality that it is. Or if it does happen, it doesn’t need to last long. So this article is a bit of a tutorial.

We’ve been conditioned to see life in specific ways. What we picked up as a child is that we are independent entities who need to control life, to make it happen the way we want. When it doesn’t go our way, we suffer. But sometimes the pain and suffering of life makes us question our beliefs. In that questioning there can be great relief. What I’m suggesting is not that you believe what I’m saying but that you look inside for yourself. Check out your own real-life experience and see what you learn, if you have an interest in ending suffering.

For instance, when we start investigating our control over life we realize some interesting things that have been there all along, that we’ve overlooked. Consider the functioning of our bodies; we're not breathing ourselves, we're not beating our hearts, we're not moving our blood, healing our wounds, growing our hair, or digesting our food. Some power is doing it but it's not us. We can’t even stop those things if we want to. So we don’t seem to have a lot of control over our body functions do we?

Consider also that when we say, "I see" or "I hear" is that true? Do we activate hearing or seeing to make it happen or does it happen by itself, before we even have a thought about it? Does the eye have to say “I see” for seeing to happen? Do you have to think “I’m going to see now” for seeing to happen?

And then there’s the whole idea about the mind and thinking. Where is the mind? Don’t we have just one thought at a time? Maybe the “mind” is just a bundle of thought-memories from the past. And thoughts themselves – do “we” think? Do we decide when we wake up in the morning whether to think or not, or do thoughts just show up on their own? Have you ever been going through your day and all of a sudden you notice you're humming a tune in your head? Did you ask for that tune? Do you ask for your next thought?... or any thought? Can you stop your thoughts when you want to? “Oops, I can’t find the off-switch!” When we look we see that the reality is -- we're being thought.

“Well, what about doing?” you might ask. “I certainly ‘do’ things.” I suggest you take a look. When you walk, are you actually doing that? Do you tell each muscle when and how far to move? When you’re walking and talking with a friend, isn’t walking just happening without your conscious awareness? When you talk, and gestures happen, do you consciously make those gestures or do they happen by themselves? It appears that “doing” happens through us, not from us. Direct, present evidence is clear: We're not living this body. It's BEING LIVED.

And back to thinking, if thoughts are the forerunner of choices then are we making choices? Or is it possible that choices are being made but we're not the choice-makers? And doing is happening but we're not the doers? Maybe the One - that Infinite Intelligence - is just using a body we call “I” to express itself. Maybe “we” are just the One showing up in form, since “we” don’t seem to have any power.

But there’s still a sense of existence and awareness for all of us isn’t there? No one can deny they're not here, that they don't exist. So we know that we're present, and that “presence” is definitely aware isn't it? That pure presence-awareness is the one aspect of our lives that has never changed; it's the same when we're 6 as when we're 66. Body has changed, thoughts have changed, self-image has changed, circumstances have changed. But the space-like awareness that provides a place for all these things to show up has never been affected in the slightest by any thought or feeling or change that has occurred in "your" so-called life. That presene-awareness happens to be our true nature. That’s what we really are – just simply an awareness that’s present.

The "me" that we’ve taken ourselves to be has no independent existence at all. It has no power. It's not even an entity. When you look inside you can't find a "me" except for a thought that it exists. It's an incredibly funny game.

Now, what does all this have to do with mature dating? Here’s how it applies: all emotional suffering happens to this phantom “me” wants things to happen in certain ways. But have you noticed that life doesn’t ask for our input? Is it true the so-called “me” knows how things should be? Can we really know we have the right answers?

When we realize we’re being lived, judgments and opinions drop away. We’ve been like the small child in a kiddy car at the amusement park. She thinks she's steering the car as it snakes its way around the track. But her efforts are having no effect at all.

We "think" we're running our lives and we twist and turn the steering wheel like mad. But it's just a big joke. When that joke is understood life becomes incredibly simple and stress-free. Then you simply watch life unfold in each moment, knowing it’s happening exactly as it’s meant to happen. It will run itself just fine, as it always has, whether we thought we had control or not. When we don’t need to try to run the show, what’s left is peace and joy. You then realize that whatever happens in your dating is just what happens. Without expectations and judgments there’s no disappointment and no suffering. Sit back, take your hands off the wheel and watch where life takes you. That’s all there is. Really!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer

149. She felt like a victim but was she?

There’s a funny thing about reality, or you might call it truth. When you don’t live in reality it always hurts. Reality means just what is, as it is. And what is doesn’t set well with a lot of us a lot of the time. We think we know how it should be, and it sure as heck shouldn’t be the way it is. With that thought we suffer.

I was thinking recently about a conversation I once had with a woman in her early 50s. She was talking about a man she was just getting to know. Unplanned circumstances occurred that found her sharing a room, but not a bed, with this new acquaintenace during a short trip here in the Northwest. They had planned to be home that night but there were delays and they were forced to get a room. For financial reasons it made sense to share a room.

In summary, they went to bed in their separate beds and she said he was very respectful. Later, though, he suggested he join her in bed so they could talk more easily, and the result was that they eventually had sex. The problem for her was that she said she felt, “like I had been raped.” This was a woman who had been on a spiritual quest for years and seemed to be pretty emotionally mature so I was surprised.

I asked, “Did he threaten you?” “No.” “Did he force you?” “Well no, not really.” “Then how is it that you felt raped?” I asked. She said, “Well, I kept saying ‘I think this is too early,’ and ‘I don’t think we should be doing this right yet,’ and things like that. But he just kept on, yet he was never really forceful.”

So what’s the reality here? Was he to blame? Not in my book. Yet she was trying to make him responsible for the sex they shared that evening that she said she didn’t really want. There are two things going on here as far as I can see. One is that whenever we do something we say we don’t want to do, that’s not true. We do it because we want something. She’s not a little wallflower woman and she certainly knew how to say no. So reality is that she wanted something. Maybe something as subtle and simple as not wanting to be seen as a prude, who knows? But she wanted something.

The second thing I see here is that she wanted to make him responsible so she wouldn’t have to face her own participation. At first it often feels good to try to make someone else responsible for our feelings. But there’s a huge down side to that. The down side is that in doing that she automatically feels like a victim. And what does it feel like to be a victim? It feels terrible because we feel totally vulnerable, unprotected and unsafe. We feel that we’re being taken advantage of and there’s nothing we can do about it.

But where is victimhood when you take responsible for yourself? There is none. Reality is that unless someone chains you or locks you up you’re probably not really a victim of anyone very often if ever. As soon as you make someone else responsible for how you feel, though, bam! In that instant you’re an automatic victim in your mind: “They made me feel (whatever it is you feel).”

That applies equally well to when someone makes a sharp or negative comment about you as it does to this situation about sex. So unless you want to feel the suffering of being a victim you might want to question whether you really want to blame someone else for how you feel. You might just be dealing in fantasies rather than reality.

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer