114. Let thoughts run without your involvement and dating will be relaxed and pleasant

All emotional suffering comes from thoughts. Not all thoughts bring suffering. But all suffering is from thoughts.

I know that may seem like a bold statement that deserves some questioning. So let’s question it. It seems like our suffering comes from things that happen in our lives doesn’t it? Since we’re talking here about dating and romance let’s just keep the focus there. When we suffer in our dating it can take a lot of forms. Virtually anything that feels stressful and uncomfortable is what I’d call suffering. It can range from feelings of loss or abandonment to jealousy, anger, self-pity, sadness, disappointment and much more.

It seems that these feelings come up most of the time because of what someone else has done or said. Their behavior, it seems, is the cause of our suffering. But if you look at the situation more deeply you’ll probably notice that it’s not the incident that causes us to hurt, it’s the thought we have about the incident. A simple way to see that is to notice that when we’re asleep and not thinking there’s no suffering. When we awake again, thoughts come in about a hurtful incident and we’re back in suffering. So clearly it’s not the situation but the thoughts about the situation that make us hurt.

If we look a bit further we may also notice that the thoughts about a situation that make us hurt are always thoughts that the situation should be different. They’re always thoughts of resistance to what is. A simple example:
Joe said such and such. That’s just a fact. No pain there.
Joe should not have said such and such. That’s a story or a belief about how it should be different. Immediate pain.

As soon as we add our opinion or judgment about an incident we hurt. Without exception it always works that way. So we could sum this up by saying judgment or resistance brings on our pain. Since we don’t like being in pain the question then is how do we get out of that?

There’s a simple way, and that way is to not get involved with “like” and “dislike” thoughts. And how do you do that, Sir? you ask. Well, thoughts have to appear in something don’t they, just like a word might appear on a chalk board. If someone wrote the word “red” on a chalk board and asked what we see, most people in a room would say they see the word. Hardly anyone would say they see a chalk board, yet it’s much bigger and more apparent than the word.

It’s the same with furniture in a room. Ask people to name the first thing they see in a room full of furniture and they might say “chair”, or “couch” or “lamp”. Hardly anyone would say “space”. Yet that’s the first thing any of us ever sees – the space that allows the furniture to be. When you notice it you’re aware that it’s much more obvious than the furniture, but we overlooked it.

Now let’s transfer that to thoughts. They have to appear in something don’t they? What is that? We can call it consciousness or awareness or beingness. Put simply, we have to be before a thought could even exist for us don’t we? No one who’s conscious can say they aren’t or that they aren’t being. They would have to be to even say “I’m not”. So beingness, like space, is the no-thing or nothing that gives everything, including thoughts, a place to show up.

That sense of being is always there. It’s the essence of who we are, and it has never changed. The being you felt as a small child, as a teenager, as a 40-year-old and now has never changed. Thoughts and beliefs, on the other hand, are changing all the time. What we believed years ago or yesterday we no longer believe.

The same being we were when we woke up this morning is the same being we were when we ate breakfast, read the paper, had lunch or mowed the lawn. It hasn’t changed, just as the chalk board doesn’t change. But the thoughts that have appeared in that beingness throughout the day have changed constantly. Yet the beingness hasn’t been affected by those thoughts at all. Even if the thoughts were painful thoughts, your emotions might have been in turmoil but the beingness was just the no-thing awareness that allowed it all to appear.

This is a kind of long prelude to the question: How do I get rid of the pain caused by thoughts? And now here’s the answer. Since it must be true that being exists before thought and that it never changes, you might see that pure being is our true nature. That’s who we are. If we put it into words we’d all say we know one thing for certain, the fact that I am. We don’t have to check with anyone or even have a thought to know I am. Thoughts have nothing to do with who we actually are. They’re just content showing up in the beingness.

So instead of letting your focus go into thoughts as you interpret or judge events and people and situation, let your focus instead stay with the beingness or awareness that has no need to correct or change anything or anyone. The content of life – all the thoughts and happenings – goes on for all of us. But when you see that they’re simply passing vibrations of movement in space why put energy into them?

That beingness you are is always stable and unchanging, however. Like space, nothing ever affects it. Yet it’s the light that allows life to be. It’s the Divine Intelligence that we all are. That “me” you call yourself wouldn’t be able to have a thought or blink an eye or raise a finger without that Intelligence energy that animates it and gives it life. So “me” is insubstantial and has no independent nature at all.

The “me” we think we are is being “thought”, being “moved”, being “lived” by that one Divine Energy that appears as a person. That One-That-Is-All breathes us and beats our hearts and grows our hair and digests our food without a thought from us. That same One Divine Intelligence also “sees” as us, “hears” as us, “tastes” as us, etc. Seeing happens before the thought, “I see”. Hearing happens before the thought, “I hear.” So obviously thought isn’t needed for our lives to run just fine. Thought it nothing but a translator, often coming in to say, “I did that.”

When you see that you don’t need to spend energy judging, interpreting and wanting to change events in your thoughts you can relax. Those events are being lived by the Divine Intelligence just as you are, and that Intelligence has been in existence long before we got here and will be long after we all leave here. In fact, it’s eternal. It had no beginning and will have no ending. So from our puny little view isn’t it a bit arrogant for us to think we know how the Universe should be functioning?

When we keep our focus on the beingness or awareness that we are, instead of the thought-content, we begin to notice life is just the way it’s meant to be. How do we know that? Simple – it is. And with that you stay out of the pain-provoking thoughts and just relish the simplicity and beauty of Life as it is. Then dating and romance are just happenings to play in and enjoy. Have fun!

Copyright © 2006 Chuck Custer