Buddha's truths, relationship's parallels, waking up to love in uncomfortable = real

Buddha truth: 4

Life is suffering ( can be)

Suffering from grasping: cling to, push away

Is way out: enlightenment

Is path to enlightenment



Susan Piver's take on this vis a vis relationships:

Relationships are uncomfortable

Trying to stabilize deny hide from discomfort causes suffering

Unconditional love is possible

Path is:
attention, with precision , on moment and partner

openness to what see

let go of trying to control




good,
and her comment:
of Buddhist trained marriage counselor:
in 30 years never found a couple where one didn't want more away ness,
one didn't want more closeness
good

Coomunication: From sh...t, to ahaa, something like love, at least learning and listening

Let's say this is happening:
You are talking with someone.

They are disgruntled with you.
You are disgruntled with them.

This happens, you know.

And what's a "waking up" kind of person,
an "on the way to enlightenment" person to do?

Relax.

Remember that the story: "This is supposed to be going
better is just a story."

Shift:
To the present.
To curiosity.
To honesty.

Try the truth,
From the present: I'm feeling uncomfortable with how this is going,
in my chest, and in my breathing and in my story that "you should be different"

Try curiosity:
I wonder what the secret war we are up to is.
Or, I wonder how we're into I'm right , you're wrong land.
Or, I wonder if we could do this differently.

Try honesty:
Part of me just wants to win this argument,
another part wants to have peace and love.

I'm not sure what to do, but I suspect we need to do something different.

Try connecting:
What do you think is missing?
What would you like that you think you aren't getting?

Something like that.

That's the start.

There's more.

Come to my workshop, if you are in Austin,
May 3, 6-8 PM
Reduced rates today, April 25 and tomorrow.
$30 first person in relationship, business, group,
$20 second.

Price at door: $50/ $35.

The aim of the workshop:
Double income
Double relationship happiness
Double "enlightenment"

See page at Awareness Equals Freedom for the
pay pal thingies.

the importance of love, 33

We wake up
one day
or part of one day
or
Right Now

and realize:
I am
I am alive, whatever that "alive" is

and it feels so good
we want to share it
with someone
hug someone
laugh with smile with joke with dance with prance with
hop skip and jump
or
just walk

or even better: lolligag
with another, backs on the grass,
or butts on the stream bank
watching the water
watching the clouds

glad to be alive
together

and there are problems to be solved
money to be made
conflicts to be resolved
pains to be understand and transformed

there is a world to be healed
and waters to be restored
and oceans and indigenous plants and people to
be "saved"

and still
you and a loved one
walk dance hug loving
lolligaging,
talking the truth,
but the slow real truth about you,
not the "you need to fix this" pseudo-truth about them

just you and the friend
in love

that's a nice part
of a nice
day

wishing these for you,
many parts
in
many days

Divorce and Enlightenment

Many people think of divorce as "failure" and use that as an excuse to feel bad.

Failing means that something didn't work.

That means you tried something.

The trick, and the deep trick, is to get excited about
1. having tried
2. what you set out to do
3. how you undermined, or didn't understand, how to achieve what you set out to do

Notice this doesn't say: figure our how your partner made it impossible for you to achieve what you set out to do.

And notice we are begging the question of most people not really knowing what they are setting out to do when they enter a relationship or a marriage.

So, having a vague idea of "happiness and a family," or "true love," or at best "mutual support," things get ragged at times, and since we have parents who usually didn't have fine and kind and awakened ways of dealing with issues, we fall back on bad models of behavior.

And get bad results.

And still : we tried for something.

Admit it. You tried.
If the aim wasn't clear , let's get excited: what could our aim have been.
( and a negative formulation is often a set up for poor results, a formulation like: not so much fighting, someone who doesn't put me down, someone who isn't ocd, or nagging, or whatever the X was; to look for "not the X" is a shadowy path to future happiness. Admit it, and even smile and your temptation, if you are in the looking for a "new one" mode.)

Here's some gold in divorce: what did we really want and were afraid to say aloud
( and gads, admit this, too, that we were too lazy to search for a non negative formulation of what we wanted).

What did you want?
What did you wish you'd said you'd wanted?

And here's more gold: what were you wanting from the other that you were not yet willing to give to yourself.

Say you don't appreciate yourself. And yet you were waiting around for your partner to appreciate you.

Or, you aren't particularly happy. And you are annoyed with (yes and unhappy about) your partner being unhappy

All this has a quick, straightforward and more or less guaranteed "cure" via the Work of Byron Katie.

Was doing this work a part of how you set about to accomplish the goals of your relationship?

Will it be part of your next relationship?

And what has this got to do with enlightenment?

Enlightenment is being present. To the now.

It is letting go of stories about how reality should be different than it is. And one of the major places that we love to complain about and demand that reality be different is in our relationships.

So we can take divorce, and its accompanying pain,  as a grand opportunity to realize who we could be when we let go of our "story" about this other person,
instead of doing the usual "my X was a jerk/ sociopath/ dope/ abuser/ creep" and discover how our judgments and demands and criticisms and inability to listen and withdrawing and attacking, how we piled fuel on the flames of unhappiness.

We can learn to have unconditional love for this person who we have separated from.

In a way that's easier, since their so called "annoying" traits we don't have to live with day to day.
But if we can't love everything about them, we don't know how to love yet.

And to be enlightened is to love reality. If this person isn't breaking laws and physically hurting people (in which case there are police person about, ready and willing to help them stop), then we should be able to love them from afar.

If we can't, the news is sad: we can't love ourselves.

Which means we aren't ready for a new relationship yet.

Which means we aren't ready for happiness yet.

Happiness is not necessarily the goal of life, but not being happy is always a sign that we are not in the present and not in love with life.

In other words, not enlightened.

Weird to give enlightenment the freight of taking us out of our misery, but guess what? That's what our misery is for: to wake us out of our trance and get us to work on the real work of letting go of our judgments about ourselves and others.

And the first step, according to the work of Byron Katie, is to be honest. To judge.

Judge yourself and your neighbors.
Write it down
Ask four questions.
Turn it around

Good. If you are divorcing or in a troubled relationship, do the work, or keep suffering, or hide from it in jogging or overeating or new sex or lots of movies or overworking.

Life is choices.

I think to wake up one is best, and you get to decide for you.

when waiting for an "i love you"

sometimes we are silly
or
maybe we should call it confused
or
even insane
but we can say that insane in the nicest possible way

and that silliness/ confusion/ insanity
goes like this:
"You should send an
'I love you'
my way."

This can be of someone we are "with"
or
someone we haven't met
but we are feeling deprived

can be a wife a husband boy/girlfriend
business chum
high school buddy
all that

we have that
naked and empty feeling
and they
whatever
they

(you know we are single
and waiting for sex to prove we
are okay,
or the smile of liking us,
or anything, anything wanting that
"I love you"
that coming from the best of all real Mom's
would just mean:

it's okay
you're okay

you're more than okay:
you're perfect)

and as we wait,
if we come to the present
and go the the quiet underneath
words
and concepts
and even (in a different way)
underneath "feelings"

if we go quiet
and listen:

the whole universe is
whispering:

I love you

and that whisper is
coming from deepest us
to the rest of us

from deepest us to everyone in the world
plus trees
roses
rocks
cars
gutters
spit slime and gore

the i love you
can't stop
everything is so fine
because we
are the everything
we see hear taste touch know
about
don't know about

it gets kind of blury
in the mystical mess bliss
and
so
f...ing what

life is whole
and the i love you is life whisper shout murmer sing
dancing to us:

I love you

it's everywhere

and if you've read this far,
here's your reward:

anything we are looking for
"out there"
is already "in here"
in the God
that is our heart
when it is a real
heart,
a receiving and transmitting
miracle maker
of
love happiness peace joy abundance bliss creativity

you want it
and
zap
it is you
it is the universe

you are the unirverse is you reverse direction
so many times you don't know
where you are going

and it
doesn't matter
 d
die before you die
you are already home
dead
and gone
to heaven

the kingdom of heaven
is
now
is
in your heart my heart the tree's heart the rock's heart the busy city street's heart
the baby smiling
saying
really
all the people are saying
in the wonderful world song:
they're really saying:
I love you

just soften
slow
listen to the whisper inside the silence

is that
"I love you?" gurgling into
your heart
or
out of it

or into every cell of your body
or out through them

keep turning
keep returning

the dance is sweet
the whirl is complete

and is so fine
to keep turning returning praise laughing loving tears

love is an inside joy
love is an inside job
live is love is like is life is...
words fall
the heart soars

life
lives and loves
itself

and we are just along
for the ride/ dance/ lovemaking love making
song symphony garden forest meadow
ocean
of
it all

of thanks
thanks
thanks

good

Our real hearts, vs the "Wounded" heart

Our real hearts love.

Love the other person.
Love ourselves.
Love our good days.
Love our bad days.
Love the other person's good and bad days.

We are curious and compassionate and generous about our and their
bad days, or moments.

We know that people don't "act out," or act mean, or lie, or act selfishly unless they are
in
pain.

Pain is enough
of a pain,
and if we condemn it, this isn't love.

This is ( our condemning,
if we go that low route)
the same old shit of parents,
and teachers,
and religious leaders who disguise the God thing
for various control trips.

Oh, well.

That's their business.

Our business,
if we want a happy, awakened and useful life:

Watch for others' real nature:
under the wound,
under the "behavior" we think
"should"
be different:

who is the real,
amazing,
same as us,
even though completely unique
person?

AND ON THE OTHER HAND
za wounded heart:
wants others to be wounded,
envies others,
lashes out,
can't be kind,
wants to complain,
wants to put down,
wants to run away when things get "too good,"
wants to run away when things get "tricky,"
wants to control
wants to self absorb

blah, blah, blah

basically:
when we are unhappy, and wanting the other (or ourselves)
to be different,
we
are
not present
and our wounded heart,
which means our mindless self,
which means our unhappy conditioning can run the show.

It's all or nothing,
not in a big Hollywood movie way,
but moment by moment:

are we mindful
or
are
we
mindless

Choose

the choice is the glory
of human life
and the amazing grace
is that this choice is
always

NOW


wow


good for us
good for life
good for all our awakened moments,
good for the suffering from our mindless moments, the pain of which is the
WAKE UP ALARM

YES.

good

Other people love us, and sometimes they forget

So much of life
is so agonized by wising, wanting, demanding
that some one,
or some ones
appreciate or love or approve of us more.


Trick and truth is:
they do love us.
They may be capable of appreciating us.
They may have the generosity to approve of us.
They may not.

And they do love us.

They just don't know it.

This is an exercise from the book, for sale to the right:
And it's a doozy.

Take someone with whom things seem not to be "going so well,"
and write a if from them to you,
a pretend
letter
to you.


In that letter say exactly what you want to hear.

This is them.

If the letter is kind and loving and apologetic and open
and insightful and seeing how you and they are the same,
and admiring and loving you.

This is who they really are.

You'll feel it.
You'll notice it.

They might never notice nor ever feel this love.

Oh, well.
It's there.

Life is good.

Just relax when someone can't come through with the goods.

Life is good.

They would love you if they could.

They are afraid,
or don't know how to love,
or are afraid to love more,
or afraid to love at all,
or never really learned how to love.

And where are they going to learn?

You loving them, even when they forget that
they love
you.

That's one way they'll learn.

And another: they'll discover the pain of not loving themselves,
and stop.
If they are wise and alert and notice what's what.

If not, they'll keep suffering and
not yet knowing how to love you,
and so be it.

Love them all you can.

They are you, when you forget how much
love you have.

When you forget how much love,
you
are.

Good.

Loneliness is a Blessing in Disguise

You are in a relationship, and your partner goes away for awhile.
And you're lonely.

You have a relationship, and you or your partner (or both)
decide it's time to end it, and
you are lonely.

You haven't been with a partner in a long time,
or can only find partners that turn out to be contentious,
or duplicitous, or boring, or ...., and the relationships don't last long,
and you long for a Real Relationship,
and you
are
Lonely.

And in all these cases, you get a marvelous chance to discover
what it is like to love.

To love yourself as all the cliche´s say.
That really isn't it, but we might as well get this one out of the way.

Most lonely people, and this isn't going to sound right,
but
oh, well,
are lonely at least in part because they are selfish.
In a way they "love themselves" too much, in the sense
that they,
like you and me and everyone,
fall prey to the me, me, me disease,
and want things to go their way.

And when things don't go their way,
they cause a stink, and the partner gets sick of them
and leaves,
or they are so precious that they have to leave the partner
because they didn't get their way.

This sounds harsh,
but think of it
as oh, so human.

The human condition:
we imagine that other people have a purpose in the universe
and that purpose
is to help us feel good or comfortable or happy or safe
or...
what WE want to feel.

And sometimes, darn them,
they just forget what they are "supposed" to be doing
and actually think that THEY are the center of the Universe.

You can see how this might cause problems.

If it weren't for sex and children, and fear of loneliness,
relationships could probably never last more than a couple
of weeks.

And now we are back to loneliness again.

Do you get lonely walking in the woods,
or in a beautiful meadow?

Usually not. We feel at one with Nature,
and we aren't demanding that the wildflowers
like us more or appreciate us more or lose weight.

We can love Nature for what it is.

This is the kind of self love we need, too.

Are we sad?
Love the sadness.

Are we afraid we will never find a partner?
Love the fear.

Are we bored?
Love the boredom.

Do we wish we could make less mistakes?
Love the learning of HOW we went about making the mistakes,
why we went about making the mistakes, and even ( or maybe especially),
how the mistakes were lessons for us.

So we are alone.

Time to think,
and watch our thinking.

Do we think kind thoughts about ourselves?
Not boastful thoughts, though that isn't the biggest crime in the world,
but kind as in: you are a good person. You are able to learn. You have these interests.
You are learning this and that and that. This is what you enjoy: how about spending more time doing the things you enjoy. This job doesn't really make you happy, how about looking for another one, or thinking about what you really want to do.

If we have unkind thoughts, this is were the fear of loneliness comes in.
Being alone is fine, but if we use the time beating ourselves up inside,
then life gets grueling.

And one thing we can beat ourselves up about is the idea:
I should have a partner right now.

I won't go into the Work of Byron Katie just now.
It's easy to find: thework.com
And if you google my blogs and the work of byron katie you'll find
plenty of essays.
Or buy my book, which lays it out over many smaller chapters.
Or buy Katie's book.

But for now:
this is a gift we can all give ourselves in any lonely moment:
to take the thought that "I'm not okay just here, by myself"
and ask:
Is it true?

If you have a partner and they are off doing something they enjoy
or want
or need
to do, doesn't love recommend loving their doing that,
and self love recommend you enjoy the time free.

Same when loved ones and you have parted ways.

You are spared the troubled times.

You have time to meditate and practice loving
every moment of every day.

When you get even halfway good at that,
so many people will want to be in your company you'll be shocked
and pleased,
and have to use astute heart and mind intelligence to find with whom
you will have the most wonderful time together.

Hint: find someone who is not afraid to be alone.
They won't cling to you.
And since, if you know how to at least halfway love everything
you do,
in partnership or alone,
you won't be afraid to be alone.

And so when you are together,
it can be love time,
not hiding from fear of loneliness time.

That seems like an improvement,
don't you think?