275. You can end stomach-churning suffering that often comes with mature dating

Thinking of writing a book some day, I started taking notes about mature dating some years ago when I realized how much unnecessary pain and confusion I saw in people my age when it came to dating. The disappointment and heartache, in both men and women, is so obvious in dating because those feelings are so emotionally acute and penetrating. The feelings are often knifelike as they stab deep into our guts.

What I had realized by then was that these feelings are always self-created, though we do that innocently. We don’t realize that we create our own world each minute. In dreamless sleep there is no world and no stress or suffering. It’s only when we wake up and say “I” that we suffer. The mind is endless in its capacity to create huge dramas out of passing thoughts. All based on that little one-letter word, “I”.

But when we question our untrue thoughts the stress and suffering they’ve created disappears because there was no reality behind those thoughts. It’s like the turmoil we create for ourselves by worrying about something that never happens. You’ve done it. You know what I’m talking about. Your worry was all a mind game, but what a drama! And what pain that false drama created.

The movies we create are endless when we don’t stop to question thoughts. Are these thoughts true? In dating can we really know what someone thinks or what they mean by their words or why they do or don’t do something? Can you really know your date or partner should do or not do what you think? Are you sure you know what’s best for you in the long run? Can you be positively sure? Does your own history show you’ve been right in the past?

Thoughts are nothing more than a game the mind plays to keep itself alive and entertained. Meanwhile, life – reality, what is – goes on as it does, with or without our opinions or approval. We don’t need to figure it out. We don’t need to know the future, or why something happened in the past. We can live in not-knowing and be contentedly happy, watching life blossom and unfold in new surprises every moment. This is peace. This is the end of stomach-churning suffering.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

274. Looking at reality ends suffering – but it seems too simple

In our “doing” society we nearly always think we have to “do” something to get rid of the disappointment, pain or suffering that often comes with dating. Yet in this blog I’m saying, “Just see reality as it is and all the suffering drops away by itself.” “How could that be,” you may be wondering. “It can’t be that simple.”

That’s the surprising part of all this: it is that simple. Here’s why. Doing involves will power. By force of will we’re going to change our thinking. “Think positively, not negatively,” the experts say. But if will power worked wouldn’t it have worked for you a long time ago? When you’re hurting emotionally wouldn’t you just will the suffering to be gone and it would be gone? But we can’t do that.

Investigating our often false thinking and seeing the truth of life is a whole different game. It has nothing to do with force or will power or effort or doing. It has to do with simply seeing what’s true. Then the ideas that argue with the truth evaporate by themselves because they were hanging on an illusion.

Let’s put this in the form of a simple, hypothetical example. Darrell and Kate have dated several times and things seem to be going well. But days go by and Darrell hasn’t called. Kate’s mind starts working overtime: “He probably got to know me better and realizes he doesn’t like me after all.” “He’s rude not to call.” “I’d never just drop out without telling someone.” “Why am I always the loser?” Those are all plausible-sounding stories but what do they have to do with reality? Absolutely nothing. And they cause Kate to agonize in turmoil.

The truth is, the only thing Kate knows is that Darrell hasn’t called. Period. That’s reality, and without a story there’s no pain in that at all. The pain is born only when a story is born. Let’s say Darrell never calls again and Kate chooses not to call him. What does she know then? That she wasn’t supposed to have a further relationship with Darrell – because she doesn’t. That’s it. Is there suffering in that? Only if Kate thinks she should have had a relationship with Darrell. All stories we create are just thoughts passing by that we latch onto and make real for ourselves. They’re all lies, but we don’t know that until we look. And looking seems too simple.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

273. Did you know that desire is the source of any dating pain you feel?

In your dating life desire is the basis of all your emotional suffering. If you’re hurting in any way about dating it has to be because you want something or someone to be different. When we don’t get what we want we suffer – in the form of sadness, anger, jealousy, frustration, loneliness and more. I’m not talking about a simple preference, of course. I’m talking about a desire that says, “If only I had that I could be happy.”

Life, however, unfolds without our desires. It just shows up, always fresh and sparkling new every moment, offering unequaled surprises and beauty if we just stop and see it.

Usually, though, we’re too busy wanting and judging to just be with what is. “Being” seems too simple. "Being" is just doing the next obvious thing without interpreting it and without a desire to alter or modify it. You live in the truth then, the truth that you don’t need to know and can’t know what’s going to happen next. This morning, for instance, I was going to have a cup of tea and go out for my usual exercise walk. I opened the refrigerator – and there in the bottom was blueberry juice, running all over. I had put a frozen bag in to thaw and apparently it had a slit in it. What a surprise!

So instead of walking right away I spent the next half-hour cleaning up blueberry juice that had run all over. I had just thought I was going out immediately for a walk but what did I know? It’s that way with dating too. We think we know what’s going to happen or what should happen. And then we suffer when it’s not what we expected. Life gets much simpler when we realize that it is what it is. Life (or God, or Source, or Infinite Intelligence) is living us and everything else. Having a war with it gets you nothing but misery. “Being” with it as it is gets you joy and peace, and some surprisingly happy experiences.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer