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

254. Questioning your beliefs almost magically gives you peace again when you’re hurting

Have you noticed that when it comes to romantic pain will power just doesn’t work? Psychotherapists will sometimes tell clients, “Just switch your mind and don’t think about it.” Or “Get busy with other things so you don’t have time to think about the pain.” No one knows how to let go of thinking or stop it. But everyone has the ability to question their thoughts and look realistically at what’s happening.

We’ve all grown up being taught what’s good and bad and right and wrong about life. We’re sure we know what’s best for us. But the truth is we don’t even know who we are. We think we’re a person running our lives until we question and see that instead life is running us. Thoughts come out of nowhere and say, “He shouldn’t have lied to me,” “She shouldn’t have died,” “It shouldn’t be so hard to find the right person for me,” “I’m older and have wrinkles so who would want to be with me now.” But those are all thoughts we can question easily. It only takes a moment of total honesty to see that we don’t know what the heck we’re talking about. We just think we do, and that causes us a lot of pain until it’s questioned and we see the truth.

A few weeks after my wife died, I remember thinking, “She was only 54, and she shouldn’t have died so young.” Then for some reason – and this was long before I had the understanding I now have – I asked myself, “Can I be really sure her life would have been better if she had lived?” And the no that came out of that question was almost ear-splitting. Of course I couldn’t know that. At that moment it was clear that she was supposed to be dead because when I looked around she wasn’t here any longer. And it was just as clear that I was supposed to have a life because I was here, and something in me knew it was not supposed to be a life of grief and misery forever. I didn’t understand but I did see reality.

Questioning is a gentle, powerful tool that can take you instantly out of any psychological suffering you’re stuck in. It may seem too simple. It may seem crazy. But questioning takes you to the truth when you’re willing to give up what you think you know. And when you see the truth there’s nothing to resist and no way to create pain for yourself. After all, can you ever successfully argue with what is?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer

253. If you believe your thoughts about dating you’re probably hurting

Thoughts aren’t real. They’re always projections of a past or a future. Reality, on the other hand, is whatever is happening – “what is” at any moment. An easy way to wipe out any suffering about your dating life is to remember that: Thoughts aren’t real. Your heart might be broken. You might feel anger, jealousy, grief, emptiness, despair, disappointment. Whatever feeling you have, notice that feelings only follow thoughts (no pain when you sleep, remember) and thoughts are always unreal. Unreal means they’re fleeting, transitory, fickle, and unreliable.

When thoughts cause pain you know, if you check it out for yourself, that you’re resisting and arguing with reality. Thoughts are trying to bring into reality something that doesn’t exist. Those thoughts are a lie; that’s why I say they're unreal.

Reality is what is, and the only reason it could be painful to you is if you think it “shouldn’t be”. At that moment you’re trying to play God. You’re saying, “I know she shouldn’t leave me because we’re the perfect match. She just didn’t give herself a chance to really know me.” Are you positively sure you’re right in that belief? Or you think, “I’m just not finding attractive people to date. I must be doing something wrong because others are finding new partners.” But is it really true that you know how the world – including your world – should be?

When you fight reality you always hurt and you always lose. When you just see and love what is you’re happy and at peace. One way is as good as the other. There’s no right or wrong here, but making war because you believe your thoughts is pretty crazy don’t you think?

Copyright © 2007 Chuck Custer