A DISGUISED OPPORTUNITY

 
Most persons enter into married life as a matter of course, but marriage will become a help or a hindrance according to the manner in which it is handled. There is no doubt that some of the immense spiritual possibilities are accessible through a married life, but all this depends upon having the right attitude.

From the spiritual point of view, married life will be a success only if it is thoroughly determined by the vision of Truth. It cannot offer much if it is based upon nothing more than the limited motives of mere sex, or if it is inspired by considerations which usually prevail in business partnership. It has to be undertaken as a real spiritual enterprise which is intended to discover what life can be at its best. When the two partners launch together upon the spiritual adventure of exploring the higher possibilities of spirit, they cannot at the outset limit their experiment by any nice calculations concerning the nature and amount of individual gain.

Married life almost always makes many demands upon both partners for mutual adjustment and understanding, and creates many problems which were not originally expected. Though this might in a sense be true of life in general it is particularly true of married life.

In married life two souls get linked in many ways, with the result that they are called upon to tackle the whole complex problem of personality rather than any simple problem created by some isolated desire. This is precisely why married life is utterly different from promiscuous sex relations. Promiscuous sex attempts to separate the problem of sex from other needs of the developing personality and seeks to solve it in isolation from them. Although this kind of solution might seem to be easy, it turns out to be very superficial and has the further disadvantage of side-tracking the aspirant from attempting the real solution.

The relative values of the various sides of the limited personality can best be appreciated when they become intertwined and appear in varied settings and perspectives. It is difficult to discriminate between them if they appear fitfully in a disconnected series. In married life there is ample room for varied experience, with the result that the different tendencies latent in the mind begin to organise around the crystallised scheme of married life. This organisation of varied purposes not only provides an unlimited field for discrimination between the higher and lower values but also creates between them a necessary tension which requires and calls forth effective and intelligent sublimation.

In one sense married life may be looked upon as the intensification of most human problems. As such it becomes the rallying ground for the forces of bondage as well as for the forces of freedom, the factors of ignorance as well as the factors of light. As the married life of ordinary persons is determined by mixed motives and considerations, it inevitably invites an uncompromising opposition between the higher and the lower self. Such opposition is necessary for the wearing out of the lower self and the dawning of the true Divine Self.

Married life develops so many points of contact between two souls that severance of all connection would mean the unsettlement and derangement of practically the whole tenor of life. Since this difficulty of breaking away from one another invites and precipitates inner readjustment, marriage is really a disguised opportunity for the souls to establish a real and lasting understanding which can cope with the most complex and delicate situations.