288. Without your unwitting story you might find your partner is more lovable than you thought

We’ve talked about how facts become stories and it’s the story that causes us to hurt, never the fact. Reality is another word for fact. It simply means “what is” just as it is. Most of us have been so conditioned to think in terms of our stories that we don’t even notice we’re the ones who added that story.

For example, you speak to your partner and he doesn’t answer. That’s the reality. A simple fact. The way the story gets added to that is when we interpret that action and attach our completely fictional meaning to it. It happens so automatically and insidiously that we believe the story as though it were a fact. We don’t even notice we’ve unwittingly added the story. It’s all fact in our minds. That is, until we investigate. And what reminds us to question our thoughts? Our pain. You’re suddenly not at peace, and that hurt is the signal to inquire. Do we really know what we’re talking about? That’s why questioning to see reality is such a powerful way to bring us back to peace and happiness and fun in life.

Let’s put our story-making habit into an example. It works like this: “I just spoke to Jim and he didn’t answer and that means…” and from there we add all kinds of stories, such as, “…he’s mad” or “…he just doesn’t care” or “…he thinks I’m too stupid to know what I’m talking about.” We can add a thousand projected stories, depending on our own self-image or conditioning. But the stories are purely our own invention because we’ve decided what it means that Jim didn’t answer.

I’ve added bold face to the words “and that means” because we don’t usually think those words or say them to ourselves. But in truth that’s what we’ve just done. We’ve determined what someone’s words or actions mean without having the slightest idea whether we’re correct or not. In our innocence we don’t notice this, however. Interpreting and judging is natural. To us, it’s how life is lived, and how everyone lives. And for most people it is how they live. That’s why most of us are hurting so much.

Of course after we’ve added our neat little story then comes our judgment: “Just who does he think he is to think I’m stupid!” “Just because I disagree with him he doesn’t need to get mad.” “He’s so selfish and rude; he’s never interested in what I say.” With those judgments there’s your pain. Judging always feels stressful and hurtful.

So how do we get past the hurt we create in our relationships? Stop. Look. Inquire. Do we really know what our partner’s words or actions mean? Are we sure things should be the way we think they should be instead of the way they are? We live in harmony with life by seeing facts as they are, without our interpretations and judgments. If we ask poor old Jim why he didn’t answer when we spoke we might just be told he was so engrossed in his project that he didn’t hear us. Hmm, now wouldn’t that be a revelation! Maybe he isn't such a bad guy after all.

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

272. Your date or partner doesn’t make you hurt, your beliefs and expectations do

Change is normal; every split-second moves out to make way for the next split-second. The very definition of change is “different”. You see it easily in the flow of nature: seasons come and go, day turns to night, there’s the rise and fall of breathing, and the rise and fall of nations. There’s heat and cold, calm and turbulence. With change come surprises, but only because we have expectations.

In mature dating, where we’ve let our heart get involved, change and surprise often hits us square in the face. We’re emotionally deeply invested and we can’t escape it. When things don’t go the way we want we label it disappointing and heartbreaking. But life doesn’t knock us around when we see it as it is, without expectations and without trying to hold on to things that are on their way out, including relationships. When we don’t take things personally we see that there’s just life. There’s no need to try to make sense of it any more than a fence post could make sense of itself. Without realizing it’s part of a bigger picture – the fence – the post can’t understand.

We’re invited by the Life Force every moment just to see what we need by seeing what is. It’s unconditional love, and if it has to come in the form of suffering at times it’ll do that. Each minute we’re being invited to see that we are the essence of life, showing up in form along with everything else. We’re not the pained, bewildered little person that’s separate from the Life Force and thinks it has to make life work all by itself. In dating this means we can let go of stress, bewilderment and suffering, and simply witness and enjoy life as it moves and modifies, floats and flows – just as it is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

262. This one, primary desire is the heart of all suffering – in dating and in life

When you’re seeking a mate, and dating, you know before you start that there’s a risk involved. The risk is that you could wind up with a broken heart. We want not to be hurt. But the primary desire everyone has – the desire that causes all the psychological suffering there ever was or could be – is the desire to have the world be the way we want it to be rather than simply seeing it the way it is.

You don’t need to ponder this idea and wonder if you could believe it or not. All you have to do is look at your own direct experience. Isn’t it true that every time you hurt emotionally it’s because you think something or someone should be different? Judgment is another word for it. We judge – this is wrong, this is bad, this shouldn’t be. Without judging where can suffering exist? It can’t.

So the question is how you get rid of that primary desire to have the world be the way you want it rather than the way it is. If we narrow our focus down to mature dating we’ve all been around long enough to see that what was a broken heart often turned out to be a blessing in disguise. What we knew with certainty at that time, we later realized we didn’t know at all. Wiping out emotional suffering is always a matter of questioning: Do we really know it shouldn’t be the way it is? Could we just allow ourselves to watch life rather than think we should run it?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

256. There’s one thing in your life that will make dating peaceful and happy always

Everything in the life we know is transitory, changing. We search for new experiences, new sensations, new objects, new loves – anything we think will make our lives happy. Yet every single time they fall short because every experience of happiness leaves us sooner or later, and it’s usually sooner. When it goes we’re back to the search again.

Psychologists tell us there are people who are addicted to romance, or to sex. They find a new romantic partner and in that first blush of romance they’re thrilled. But then the rose fades and they’re disappointed. So they’re off for a new romance. It’s a constant circle of win and lose for them. Relationships with any object, whether it’s a new plasma TV, a new car or a new partner, will always leave us wanting. The thrill is short-lived and transient. Nearly everyone on earth lives their whole lives on this wheel of win/lose, then win and lose again. We strive for something, get it, and then lose the joy it temporarily brought.

There’s good news, however, and it applies directly to dating. The good news is that there’s one thing in your life that has never changed and is always peaceful and happy because it doesn’t take us out on a search again. That one thing is awareness or what we could call presence. You have a sense of being present. You know you exist. That knowing you exist isn’t a thought or belief. You don’t have to think if someone says, “Do you know you are?” Through all the changes in your life – the physical, emotional, mental, and experiential changes – that sense of being, that knowing that we’re present, has never changed. It’s never been affected by any circumstance or experience.

That sense of being or simple awareness is who we all are. No one could say “I’m not” because even to say the words you’d have to “be”. But when we learned the idea that we’re a separate person who has control in life, that’s when our troubles began. “Being” just watches life without judgment, desire, opinion or interpretation. It’s what you feel when you’re immersed in gazing, without thought, at a sunset or mesmerized by a project you’re deeply engrossed in. Small babies live in this empty beingness all the time, never discontent unless they're physically uncomfortable.

The times when we’re in emotional pain over dating are the times when we think we’re in control and believe our thoughts – thoughts that something should be different. That’s why questioning and investigation is so useful. It helps us realize that we don’t really know the answers to life, even our life, which we thought we knew. Eventually we begin to see that anything we add to that awareness of “I am” is trouble. Because that’s when we start dividing things into two – man/woman, good/bad, lucky/unlucky, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t, good/evil, pretty/ugly, etc. Immediately we’re judging that life one way – our way of course – is good and the other way is bad. Even at the moment it looks good to us we only have to wait awhile and it’ll be bad. We all know this. This is nothing new to anyone. The moment we’ve created right we’ve also created wrong. With “good” we’ve created “bad”. But there’s no such thing, except in our thoughts. We put the labels on and then suffer because of them.

To be at peace, content, and happy is as simple as just noticing that every thought, experience, or object appears somehow. What does it appear in? It appears in the clear space of presence or being. The being/awareness is the silent, still background that allows for everything without judging or rejecting anything. We live in that natural state of being or presence when we just witness life as it is. The alternative is to follow thoughts and beliefs out into the world of wants and needs and that never-ending win/lose wheel.

Whenever you have a disturbing thought you already know, from direct experience, that it will change. The mind jumps from one thought to another like a monkey in a tree. But the empty, space-like awareness that allows for thought is never affected and is always content and happy. That’s your true nature and it can watch thoughts without sticking to them or believing them. How could they be real when they’re changing all the time? Their fickleness is proof of their falseness.

When you live in presence/awareness and bring that to a relationship you’ll always be happy, no matter what’s going on with the relationship. Because whatever is going on is just another changing object that appears in the never-changing, always-content beingness of life. That's called living happily and harmoniously with what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

255. Dating heartaches are about what we THINK not about what happens

Every item I’ve posted in this blog is trying to show you how seeing reality lifts you immediately out of any suffering associated with mature dating. This isn’t theory. It’s not something I’m asking you to believe. This is about the way the world really works. And if you’d like you can check it out for yourself. In fact, that’s the only way you can prove it to yourself and experience the peace you get from investigating.

For some years I tried to believe a concept that’s quite popular: We create our own reality. The way it’s most often used, it means that you get what you think. So if you focus on positive thoughts about what you want in life you’ll get it. Seminar leaders and authors tell you it’s so easy: just don’t ever think of what you don’t want and always focus on what you do want. If you apply that to dating in these later years of life you’d have the partner you want if you just hold your tongue right, make sure your socks are straight, and focus on already having that special person in your life as though it had already happened. That’s the way, the experts say.

The problem is, it doesn’t work. Some people’s lives are destined to be successful in society’s terms – wealth, possessions, status, power, etc. They’re the ones who tell us how they did it and how we can all do it too. But try as I might – and I worked hard at it – those ideas never paid off. Nor do they pay off for most of the folks who read the books and pay handsome fees for the seminars. Why? Because, as I’ve now realized, Life is living us, not the other way around. Thoughts or no thoughts, visualization or no visualization, there is no “little me” who could be in control. It’s a myth.

Not one person on earth has any independent power to take a single breath or create a single thought. The Life Force or God, if you want, obviously came into form and sustains itself as form every moment. Humans are one of the forms. We’re the instruments as life is lived through us. We don’t see that though. We want so badly to be in control that we keep trying, failure after failure, to make life work our way because we’ve been told all our lives that God gave us free will. Even if we had free will would we know what to seek, what's really best for us?

Happiness is the bottom line we’re all seeking. To be happy by concentrating on what we want we’d have to have the power to control our thinking wouldn’t we? Yet who can do that? Who can stop thinking? Do you know where the “off” switch is? When your thoughts are so painful why not just stop them for awhile? No one can do it. That’s why we like sleep so much. Thought stops and therefore emotional pain stops because it all stems from believing our thoughts.

Investigating life as it really is, however, helps us see that when we just love life the way it is we have no psychological suffering. Resisting life by judging, interpreting, comparing, setting one thing against another is always painful. When we see that life is the way it is, and we stop trying to tell God what to do we’re happy. God, by the way, is another term for “what is”. How can we know God? Just notice everything you take in with your senses. That’s God. What else could it be?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

250. You can be happy, but it won’t come from finding a partner, strange as that seems

Nearly everyone dating in these mature years is dating with a goal. We want to find a partner. But that’s really a middle goal. The ultimate goal is the same as the goal for virtually any activity we pursue: We want to be happy, or at least happier. So if the final goal is to be happy why not just skip the middleman – getting a partner – and go for happiness? That sounds kind of nuts doesn’t it? But if we examine it a little closer it may not sound so crazy.

What is happiness? Is it really getting something we want, whether it’s a partner, a new car or that next cruise? No, we can see that that’s not true. If getting something made us happy we’d be happy forever once we had that thing – a partner or a new car, for instance. But are we? No. After awhile we’re on the search once more for some other thing to make us happy.

And while we’re searching we’re not happy. Oh sure, some people say they find a lot of joy while they’re working toward something. But we’d have to say, if we’re totally honest, that the nagging feeling of wanting and not feeling quite completely fulfilled isn’t what we’d call happiness.

Since we’ve temporarily eliminated a partner as our source of happiness where do we go to find the happiness we want? We thought finding something new would be it, but we’ve just looked and noticed that’s not true at all. So what is happiness? Well, ancient and current people who have really examined and investigated life have noticed something interesting. Happiness isn’t getting something, even though we do feel happy when we’ve gotten it and it feels like that thing or person is the source of our happiness.

Actually, a closer look reveals that it’s not the object we’ve gotten but the lack of that nagging, striving, seeking desire for a short time that is the real source of happiness. When there’s no desire for something to be different the mind is peaceful. It can be present with simply what is and that feels happy. In sleep, for instance, happiness and peace is always there because there’s no nagging thought of what should or ought to be, or what we want to be different from what we have.

Even during waking hours we all have those moments when we’re totally peaceful and happy. Those times usually occur when we’re so totally engaged with something, whether it’s a project we’re working on or watching a gorgeous sunrise over a lake, that we’re just “lost” as we sometimes call it.

Another point: We tend to think that happiness comes from the object of our desire. A car is a good example. Does that metal and glass and rubber really make happiness? For a person dying of cancer giving them a new car wouldn’t mean a thing. So it’s the subject, not the object, that provides the happiness.

As one well-known East Indian sage, the late H.W.L. Poonja put it, “To have true peace you have to be alone, separated from everything you enjoy and love as separate objects. This bliss, the bliss that does not depend on enjoying an object or an experience is imperishable, permanent. No matter what else is destroyed this will remain. Nobody knows where this happiness is because everyone is looking for it in the wrong place.”

So, how does this apply to mature dating? It simply means that if we live in our natural state of being, that state before thoughts and desires, we’re simply being in life. If your natural impulse is to date you’ll find yourself dating. But you won’t be dating with a goal, with that stress and pressure of making your life work in some way you don’t even know is best for you, really. Instead, you’ll just date for the fun of being with someone in the present, with no futurizing.

Having a partner may or may not happen. But why be miserable while you wait for something that may never be when you can be happy in the whole process of dating and living now? Then we just let the unfolding of the universe take us where it wants, which is what it’s going to do with or without our hopes and nagging, pressure-filled desires.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

249. Mature dating is a fun adventure when we live in harmony with the way of it

Dating in your senior or mature years is really not much different from any other aspect of life. It’s one slice of life. However, the struggle, strife and suffering that most people experience in everyday life is often magnified and brought to the fore when we’re dating because romantic relationships are so dramatic and intensely personal. The pain of a lost love can be like no other pain.

That’s why it’s so helpful to see that we can back off from life and not take it personally when we realize that we’re being lived and we really have no control. Then it’s a matter of just flowing with life as it happens rather than trying to fight or control what happens.

If these are new ideas to you I understand; they can sound crazy. They did to me too, at first. However, nothing I had ever done relieved the emotional hurt I often felt when life didn’t go my way. And when I read about what the sages have been teaching throughout the centuries it seemed to me that they might just have something. Those who saw the light (enlightened?) were from all parts of the world, all cultures, all centuries, and they all had come to see the same thing, with no input from each other because there wasn’t the communication in those days that there is today.

What they all saw, simply put, is that some Life Force – call it God if you like – is energizing itself into form, and we humans, like every other form in existence, are among the objects brought into existence.

We’re being lived. If you don’t think so try to make yourself do nothing, for example. You can’t do it. Try not breathing. You can’t. Try not thinking. You can’t. Try not blinking your eyes or sneezing or hiccupping. It just can’t be done. What moves your hands when you express yourself as you talk? What just made you swallow? Obviously we’re not in control of this “me” we think we are. Even the very idea of “I” or “me” is no more than a thought. No one has ever located a Me anywhere. This so-called Me has no individual power. It can’t exist for a split second without the power that enlivens it and animates it. So how could it be in charge of how life should go?

Seeing that, what the sages taught is to just relax, see life as it really is, and flow with it. Realize that what happens is obviously supposed to happen, for no other reason than that it does. You’re stood up for a date? Obviously you were supposed to spend that time doing something else. How do you know? Because the time is available and you’re going to fill it some way, whether you like it or not. Your honey decides to leave you? It must be that you’re supposed to be alone for awhile, or be available to meet someone else. Again, how can I know that? Simple. Because that’s what is and you can’t argue with it. You can think it should be different. You can wish it would be different. But in the end, it just is the way it is. So why spend all that energy and misery resisting the way it is? That's insanity, and a lot of suffering.

Flowing with life the way it is may sound like caving in and giving up but it’s not. It’s a vital, snappy, full-of-life, active way to live. It’s a not-doing that begins to recognize the intelligence-energy of the universe as it is. You begin to see the fullness of life that’s always been present and is available for us to realize when we stop trying to control life. And though we're not the doers everything gets done.

In this realization you’re not succumbing and folding up with your tail between your legs. And you’re not crawling into bed to bawl your eyes out and be depressed because life let you down. Instead, you’re watching with amazement as life unfolds in the way it does, which might be much different than you had expected. What a mystery! What a delight! Life sparkles amazingly when we just see it as it is, and realize we're being lived right along with everything else. We're actually that living power showing up now as a human. What a miracle as it changes every second! Dating can be exciting, adventuresome and fun when we simply live harmoniously with the way it is. What the heck! Might as well since life is going to be the way it is whether we like it or not. We don’t get a vote, have you noticed? In fact, there is no independent "we" to ever have had a vote in the first place. How can a drop of ocean spray vote against the ocean?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

246. The way to end dating pain and suffering seems too simple, but it works

When you think of all the ways mature dating can be painful it’s no wonder that some people say they’re not interested in meeting a partner any more. They’ve been hurt too much and it’s not worth it, they say. Dating pain can range from jealousy, sadness, and anger to emptiness, disappointment, despair, and more. With all these ways to feel hurt it seems unbelievable that there could be one, simple solution that wipes every one of them away. That’s why people often say, “It can’t be this easy,” when they hear about what the sages and masters have been sharing for centuries. Sages say it’s just one misunderstanding that’s behind all emotional suffering.

That misunderstanding is basic and often hard to swallow at first. It’s this: We believe we’re living our lives and it’s actually the other way around: Life is living us. Every beat of our hearts, every move we make, every thought that pops in to wherever we think we think, is that mysterious power expressing itself through us, AS us. Not a lot of people are eager to hear this.

We can see the truth of this easily in babies and very small children. They have no ego judgments or desires because they don’t sense a separate me. They’re never unhappy unless they’re physically uncomfortable. But then around the age of two or so we all began to get a sense that “I’m separate” (you remember your kids going through the terrible twos don’t you?). From that moment on we’re in this fight to control, win, compete, interpret, and judge life.

But the basic sense of being that babies have is still our underlying essence. If you take any painful thought you have and notice that there’s got to be something separate from that thought to even know there is a thought, you’ve taken a big step. Before there is a thought we all know we are – we exist. And that beingness is aware. If someone asks, “Do you exist?” it doesn’t take a thought for us to answer, “Yes, of course.” That basic presence-awareness that sees and knows all objects, including thoughts, must be who we are in essence. That sense of beingness or isness has never changed throughout your lifetime. Ego thoughts, judgmental thoughts, self-image thoughts – all these have changed. But that sense of I-ness that is the space for thoughts to show up in has never been altered or disturbed by anything. It’s just awareness of life as it is.

Next time you have painful feelings about dating at this mature stage of life just notice that the thoughts that bring on those feelings eventually change. When we ask ourselves if we’re absolutely sure life should be the way we – at any moment – think it should be we have to say no. If we’re honest with ourselves we know we can’t answer yes to that question because so many of the thoughts and beliefs we held so firmly in the past have crumbled over time. Reality shows us we can’t really trust what we think and feel. We’ve proven that to ourselves again and again.

What we can do to date peacefully and happily is to just see life as it is. It doesn’t even take acceptance because acceptance means there would have to also be non-acceptance. Seeing life as it is doesn’t include good/bad, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t dualities because there could be no such thing until the so-called “mind” invents it. “What is” is just life, showing up moment by moment, without any suffering at all until we impose our wants on it. If you’re thinking, “This is too simple,” I don’t blame you. I only invite you to take a deep look and see for yourself.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

239. Could it be that your mature dating pain is self-created?

Someone told me the other day about a bumper sticker she'd seen. It read:

REALITY IS NOT WHAT YOU THINK!

How true that is. Most of us look at reality through our filters of good/bad, right/wrong, should/shouldn’t and other opposites. Reality is just what is, as it is. It’s neither good nor bad until we put that label on it.

In mature dating the moment you think, “He shouldn’t be so friendly with her,” “She shouldn’t be dancing so close with him,” “If he cared he’d call,” or make any other judgment your experience is not based on reality. You’re viewing life through your “belief” filters and you suffer. Your experience, then, is a self-created myth.

Loving life as it is, full of mysteries and surprises, is living in harmony and peace. Before judgmental beliefs can even appear you’re the beingness that allows the appearances to show up, like space permits objects to show up.

That beingness or presence has no opinions or judgments. It’s simply love and uncaused joy. Questioning your painful beliefs reveals that unborn love and joy at any moment because it’s who you naturally are before you lay on your judgmental thought-filters and start looking through them at the skewed world you’ve created.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

230. “Futurizing” isn’t a word but it creates lots of stress in mature dating

There’s no word in our dictionaries yet called “futurize” but there should be, I think. Futurizing would describe the habit of fixating on the future, usually with a great deal of concern and stress.In the past I did a lot of futurizing so I know what it feels like from experience. I’d focus on thoughts such as: “When I meet this woman will there be a spark?” “She’s a city person and I’d prefer the country so would we ever be able to live together?” “What if I don’t find a partner and I’m alone for the rest of my life?” There were hundreds of these thoughts I’d snowball into worry and concern.

Then I came upon the teachings of spiritual masters who pointed the way to a clear understanding of life. When I saw that the nature of life is just to be as it is, and that humans are part of that nature, I realized I have nothing to do with “my” future. Ah, all of a sudden I could just relax, knowing the future will be what it is and I don’t have to make anything happen or even wish for anything in particular.

I realized that I’m not breathing myself and that thoughts aren’t mine, they just come. Seeing that I’m being lived simply meant I could be fully in this moment, enjoying the only time there is (this moment), and watching the future roll out before me, including everything about meeting, dating and mating.

Next time you find yourself spending a lot of stressful energy on thoughts and beliefs about your future you might just notice that futurizing is nothing but a bad habit that’s usually not fun. Happiness and peace is letting thoughts about the future float right on by because they won’t make a whit of difference to what will actually happen anyway.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

227. Questoning your thoughts can bring relief from mature dating pain

“Is that true?” “Can I absolutely know that it’s true?” Those are the first of four questions Byron Katie offers in the simple process of investigating our thoughts that she calls The Work. Those questions, or any other deep questioning of your thoughts, will prove almost magical when you’re feeling stuck or hurting as you’re dating in these senior and mature years of life.

The reason a few simple questions are so powerful is that they make us stop and see reality, which is just the way things are. We’ve all heard of people who express thoughts like:

• I really need a partner.
• If he loved me he’d do what I want.
• It’s better to settle for him than to be alone.
• Love never lasts anyway.
• If I tell him how I truly feel he’ll be mad (or hurt).
• I don’t want to hurt her.
• If he really cared he’d know what I want.
• If I get angry enough she won’t do that again.
• If I do what he wants, even when I don’t want to, he’ll do what I want too.
• This bothers me but I won’t say anything because I don’t want to cause trouble.

Maybe you’ve even believed thoughts like this yourself. But are any of them, or a thousand more you could ask, really true? Is it really true you need a partner, for instance? I once knew a woman who said she got into one unhappy relationship after another simply because she believed that thought. She was unable to see that the relationship wasn’t right for her because she thought she needed to have a man. Eventually, though, each connection unraveled anyway, she told me, and she’d be off desperately grasping at the next wrong man because she thought she needed someone.

Every belief we have about relationships can be questioned. Many times you realize that, even though you’ve believed it all your life, what you think just isn’t true. With questioning you don’t have to try to use will power to change yourself. All you do is see reality and change happens automatically. It’s no different than walking down the road to get water from a mirage. You only have to see once that there’s no water there, and never again will you pick up a bucket and head for a mirage. It doesn’t take will power. It simply takes seeing what is.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

225. Pain-free mature dating is about seeing life clearly, without our stories

When you see life as it is, dating in these senior and mature years is a lot more pleasant and pain-free. It’s when we want life to be our way that we have problems and hurt. Wanting life to be our way means telling ourselves stories, such as:

1. She should have called.
2. He could do better than that.
3. A thoughtful woman wouldn’t say that.

Seeing reality, or life as it is, however, turns those statements into:

1. She shouldn’t call until she does.
2. He did the best he could do. (In the moment don’t we all do the best we can to make ourselves happy? Isn’t happiness the result all actions are aimed at?)
3. This woman said that.

In the first three statements there are judgments we can’t prove. Those judgments are always stressful and painful because we’re fighting the way life actually is.

The second set of three are just statements of the way things are. How do you know they should be that way? They are. Isness is the built-in proof and when we live in harmony with isness we’re happy and peaceful.

When we see life clearly, without our judgmental stories, we don’t have to be in a war with our partners. They are who they are, doing what they do, and they have every right to be just that. All we need to do is see them as they are, and then either naturally move toward them or away from them just as any animal naturally moves toward pleasant surroundings and away from unpleasant ones.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

224. Make-believe isn’t just for children, it’s rampant in mature dating too

Expectations in a mature dating relationship can kill the relationship – and hurt like hell. Expecting is laying our imaginary picture on an imaginary future. For example, you meet someone and you begin to fantasize who they are and how they’ll make you happy. I know of a man in his later 70s who recently met a woman after having been widowed about three years ago. He’d been deeply mourning the loss of his life-long companion and then a new woman comes into his life and suddenly life turns for him.

He begins to feel young and alive and within weeks he’s planning trips with her and giving her all kinds of gifts, some very intimate and romantic. He tells her how much she means to him and it’s clear he’s fallen in love. But without realizing it, he’s fallen in love with his image of this woman and his make-believe picture of their future together. No matter how wonderful she is, he couldn’t have fallen in love with her because he doesn’t know her. He only knows his picture of her after being with her a short few weeks.

The mind is tricky and can run all sorts of games of fantasy and illusion, as when you work yourself into a frenzy worrying that someone hasn’t come home on time. Thoughts come on their own and we can’t stop them. But we don’t have to pay attention to them either. Instead, we can step back into the pure, simple awareness that sees thoughts come and go. That awareness is never affected by the thoughts that show up, any more than the sun is affected by clouds appearing in the sky.

Clear awareness just sees life as it is. That’s reality. Without our made-up stories reality is never painful. It just is. But let the fairy tales run and you’re probably in for a world of hurt because reality eventually becomes clear and our dreamy expectations rarely match it. Reality always wins because it’s simply what is. When we don't add our fantasies life is smooth.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

221. “Out there” is never a problem in mature dating, it’s always “in here”

A friend of mine told me the other day about a bumper sticker she saw. It applies perfectly to the source of suffering in mature dating. It read, “Reality is not what you think!”

In just a few words that line sums up what we’ve been talking about here. Reality, or what actually is, has nothing to do with thought. What our senses register about the world just as it is, is reality. There’s no emotional pain in that at all.

What causes us to hurt in senior dating is the thinking that gets added to reality. Many times we don’t simply see reality, or “what is” just as it is. Instead we add judgments to what is: “He should call me.” “She should have told me the truth.” “They shouldn’t do that.” “I’m getting older and I should find someone soon.” But in all those cases reality is just the way things are. It’s always our opinions, interpretations and judgments that cause us to suffer. Without that, there is no suffering. There’s just reality and our awareness of it.

And if this seems confusing, reading further in this blog may help. I invite you to remember one thing, however, and that’s this. We’re ALWAYS the source of our own pain. The problem is never “out there;” it’s always “in here” – in our thoughts.

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

219. Answers to a reader’s questions: What does make happiness in mature dating?

An anonymous reader wrote yesterday asking for clarification of statements I’ve made in this blog about mature dating. The questions were good so I’m quoting them and hopefully providing some clarity here. Behind these questions is the assumption that we’re in charge of our lives. So let’s examine that assumption as we go through the reader’s questions.

Q. Why are we called sentient beings and insects are not? Don't we all digest food, our wounds heal, the natural functioning goes on? Sometimes I think you are describing a vegetative state here, insofar as humans are concerned. These things often happen in a vegetative state, so is that called happiness?

A. Yes, bodily functions often do go on naturally in a vegetative state but I’m referring to a conscious state, to normal, everyday living. If you were vegetative, meaning unconscious in my understanding of the word, you couldn’t be happy or unhappy because you would be unaware of feelings.

Happiness is the absence of resistant thoughts. When we’re not thinking something should be different we don’t have any problems and we don’t suffer emotionally. Without problems in life most people would think of themselves as happy, or content, or peaceful – whatever word you choose. That’s the happiness I’m talking about. It’s only when we step in to judge life that we feel so miserable. And judging means thinking that anything should be different.

Q. What happened to "effort"? Is it "effort" that makes one unhappy, therefore it is to be avoided?

A. Here’s an example of where the idea of a person who can make an effort shows up. Without that assumption of a person who has an opinion there is no effort to make life be a certain way. Rather than effort, which is designed to get a result we want, what I’m referring to is simply seeing life as it is, without an opinion about how it should be. When we see life as it is we make no effort and have no struggle and no pain. When we think something should be different, whether we think, “My date should have called” or “She shouldn’t be so friendly with that other guy” we set up our own suffering. What we haven’t noticed is that people do what they do and life is what it is. How do we know they shouldn’t be doing life “our” way? They’re not, that’s all. Reality is reality and to argue with it is mad. It’s already a done deal.

Q. I almost get the impression from your blog that any relationship will just move along all by itself. Is that true? What does that look like?

A. Yes, what I’m speaking of refers to relationships and to all of life. Life and relationships do move along by themselves. What it looks like is this: You’re sitting in a group having a conversation and without realizing it you cross your legs. If someone asks if you crossed your legs you’d probably say, “Well, I obviously did that but I sure don’t remember it.”

Or take seeing, for example. We say, “I see.” But do you have to do anything to make seeing start? Do you have to think: I want to see? Do your eyes have to decide to see? No, seeing happens by itself doesn’t it? So is it true that “I” see, any more than it’s true that “I” cross my legs, blink my eyes, digest my food, beat my heart or breathe my lungs? Even thoughts aren’t yours. Thinking happens. We have no idea what our next thought will be. And if we controlled thoughts would we choose to have sad or painful thoughts, sometimes continuing for days or months or years? “You” did none of those actions or thinking, yet it appears.

It’s the same with relationships, and we all know it from our own direct experience – things happen and we’re not in control. You have a huge fight with your date and you’re sure it’s over for both of you. Three days later you’re speaking again and you’re totally surprised. Or you’ve given up on dating or ever finding the right man. A week later you start talking to the guy in the supermarket checkout line and a year later you’re married to him. (This actually happened to a woman I know.)

Q. If nobody makes any effort, then the life force didn't want it to happen? I'm confused here. Perhaps you can clarify for me.

A. Yes, whatever effort or lack of effort that happens IS the Life Force doing what we call effort. It doesn’t involve anybody, any “me”. Action (that we call effort) happens or it doesn’t, just like rain happens or not. If movement (effort) is supposed to happen through somebody it will. You can make all the effort you want and not get what you’ve been striving for. So it isn’t effort or no-effort that produces results. Results simply show up as they are, just as effort shows up as it is.

The most important thing to realize is this: This is about seeing that we’re not independent individuals who have any independent control over anything. Who we are is not separate from the one, single power or life force that appears as everything, including you and me. Everything appears out of that silent stillness, that void, and returns to it. We exist and we know we exist. We can’t deny it for the simple reason that it would take presence to make a denial. So we’re present and we’re not the power behind our presence or our awareness of it.

Then thought appears on the scene and the little me gets in the picture, thinking it’s in control. We think we’re the doers when in fact life, including our life, is being done. We’ve simply shown up out of the silent stillness that’s the background of everything. That emptiness from which everything shows up is like space. Space can’t be seen, smelled, touched, tasted or objectified in any way. It has no boundaries, no center point, nothing you can describe. Yet you can’t argue that it’s there. Without space nothing could exist.

In the same way, without that silent, space-like emptiness or void, nothing could be. For you to even know you have a thought or have suffering there has to be something separate from suffering that knows it. That knowing is presence, your pure essence or what’s often called your natural state. We’re not separate from that emptiness, which I sometimes call the life force, or source or the absolute. (I seldom use “God” because the word has so many mixed connotations.).

In other words, we’re being lived. It’s only that thought of a “me” we think is separate from the source that’s behind all our suffering. When there is no “me” that assesses and judges everything, life can simply be seen as it is, without judgment, opinion, or interpretation. Of course, without judgment – thinking something needs to be modified or changed – we’re content, happy, at peace. We’re simply watching life unfold, including the life that unfolds AS “me”.

This way of seeing the reality of life applies to every aspect of every relationship and every moment of life – the life we’ve mistakenly thought was ours. Animals and very small babies already live in that natural functioning. They make no judgments. That’s why they’re content, happy, without problems. What else could you want in life but to be happy with everything just the way it is? Seeing life that way could there be any struggle and suffering?

See life as it is and you also see that peace and happiness is there, waiting, as it’s always been. We’ve never been anything but that Presence-Awareness thinking we were separate and had to struggle to make “our” life go. When the separation ends and there is no me-thought that wants life to be “my way” all suffering dies too. What’s left is happiness. Ahh, what a relief!

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer