Most of us have attended weddings along the way, where the vow “Til Death Do Us Part” has been exchanged between partners.
We marry another because we believe they complete us – in other words, we believe they represent a love that is and has been missing from our heart of hearts. That love between a husband and wife is a certain level of love, but it isn’t a true marriage of love until we understand the purpose of our existence on this planet, until we understand what the true purpose of relationship is in our life.
In Guy Finley’s book “Relationship Magic”, he shares 3 stages of relationship as being:
1) Woo-hoo! – When you first meet your partner and everything is just heavenly. Our partner can do no wrong.
2) Boo-hoo! – The novelty of the new relationship has worn off a bit and now, what used to be a “cute or adorable” personality quirk or habit, becomes an irritation every time it is exhibited. In other words, I am often disturbed by what my spouse says or does.
3) This stage comes in where the rubber meets the road and where true inner work begins if either partner wants to know anything about true love, true marriage – a relationship with God.
The 3rd stage is an agreement on the part of one or both individuals to suffer themselves in heated moments of anger, blame, resentment and the like. For when there is that conscious choice made, a prayer for God to intervene in the moment to transform the parts in that relationship that always do the same thing (blame, resent, punish), there is not only a true marriage that takes place, but a death as well.
The marriage is between a higher part of ourselves with a lower part of ourselves. Some call it “a marriage between heaven and earth.”
The death that takes place is an actual reuniting, and not a parting. What appeared to be separate to us (at one level) is seen and understood as one thing. What was typically projected outward as “our spouse’s fault” (for anger and blame erupting) is seen as something within ourselves that our spouse simply triggered for us to see so that it could be healed and made whole.
So, the 3rd stage could really be called a “thank you” stage – “We thank our partner for triggering the parts in us that we could see in no other way.” This is probably one of the most difficult things we will ever agree to enter into because it really is the crucifixion of self – the sacrifice of “our will” in favor of “Thy.” That is our life’s purpose. We have simply been unaware of that purpose until now.
In one of the episodes of the TV series, “Silent Witness”, one of the forensic pathologists said “Death – What good is any of this if we can’t understand that.”
We are truly supposed to die to these old parts of ourselves before we actually physically pass from this earth, because if we do that, there won’t be fear, regret, resentment when we physically pass. We will have come to know something of our eternal essence, our immortal self.
We are intended to die to the old, relived, reincarnated parts of ourselves that only know to blame, resent, hate, glorify, and the like. But 99% of the people in this world want nothing to do with that because conscious suffering is “uncomfortable” to us. Conscious suffering is “unfamiliar” to us presently and therefore is most often pushed away by our will. But the only way for the prodigal son to return home is to consciously suffer the parts of him or herself that unconsciously created an illusory will called “ours.”
“Til Death Do Us Part” is inverted.
Until we agree to die to these old parts of ourselves, we will truly be apart from real life, because dying to those parts of ourselves is actually agreeing to take part in real life. In that agreement, we are shown that there is really no such thing as death as we have come to believe it. We see that our spouse is just a different aspect of the one self, the one consciousness, as are all other human beings. Our spouse is simply someone that holds many revelatory triggers, perhaps more so than a friend or acquaintance.
All of this to say that in a true marriage, the wish must be for a love higher than the two can ever give each other. God’s Love. In order for that true love to enter any relationship, something has to be given for it, voluntarily. It’s literally the meaning of laying down your life for another.
Most in this world want just the opposite. They want to be seen as something special. They want to be praised and seen in a certain light. They want to be considered the best. They want to be validated. The list is endless. But the “meek shall inherit the earth” and “blessed are the poor in spirit.”
Sacrifice. The road home.
Who is willing to let their spouse have the last word? Who is willing to let their spouse be right? Who is willing to let their spouse take praise for something they did themselves? Who is willing to not say the thing that is always said that always starts a fight? The list of things we can do to die to these parts of ourselves is endless.
Do you want to truly know something about God’s Life? God’s Love?
If so, die to yourself so that you may be shown that what you actually gave up was nothing but an idea that something in you believed it needed to hold onto in order to sustain a sense of itself.
We need nothing but God. There is nothing but God. Not only is it true that “no one is good save the father”, but as well, no one is there, save the father.
Image courtesy of: Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash
