260. Being peaceful and happy is as natural as gravitating toward a mate

Our natural state is peace and happiness. You can prove that to yourself by just noticing that in those moments when you’re just being, without really thinking of anything, you’re perfectly content. Or consider this, before any movement there’s stillness. Stillness has to be the background on which movement appears. It’s that way with noise also. Before sound there’s silence. Notice that you can jiggle a cup of water and when you stop jiggling it goes back to its natural state, stillness. You can make any sound – strike a gong, play a note, say a word – and when the sound stops there’s silence again. Silence is the natural state.

In silence and stillness there’s nothing but peace, no disturbance. It’s the peace we feel when we’re asleep at night. It’s the state small babies live in until they get old enough to have a sense of “me” and begin to believe their thoughts. We suffer, in dating and in other aspects of life, because we’re confused. We resist and argue with life as it is; that’s the confusion. We think life should be different because we’re confused about who we are. We haven’t noticed that living is happening through us not from us. We aren’t the authors of life. In fact, we have no independent power at all. Our very existence and every breath and heartbeat is given to us.

When you feel stress about your experiences in dating just notice that you believe some thought that’s fighting with what is. We don’t argue with gravity, we don’t whine that leaves fall off the trees in the fall, we don’t complain that some flowers have no perfume. This is all just the way life is, and who knows why?

All of life is like that. There’s a name for it when we disturb our natural inner silence and stillness by thinking anything should be our way instead of the way it is. It’s called insanity.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer