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What Would An Ideal Marriage Be Like? Question: Would you
give us your general thoughts or what you think the
Brotherhoods’ teachings are about what the ideal marriage should be.
What kinds of things should a mate expect to get from his mate, and how can
they work together so that both of them achieve balance and all the good
stuff? What are the main facts you think should be present in a marriage; and also, not to be negative, if it should get to
such-and-such a point, should you break the marriage off or what? What is the
idea of marriage as far as helping an Ego to grow and when does it become
such a point that it should be terminated in
divorce? All of your general thoughts about marriage. Richard:
In twenty-five words or less? That’s a very large subject, and one which we devote a lot
of discussion to, and it goes on, and on, and on, because it covers just
about the whole areas of human relationship and growth of individuals through
dealings with other people. So at best, I can just give you a brief review of
some of the things that we talk about. I hope I can
just remember them off the top of my head rather than having my notes in
front of me for giving talks on the subject. In the first place, the
relationship between a man and woman which results in marriage and very
likely starting a family and things of that sort is extremely growth
engendering, and it certainly is a further stage in extending yourself beyond
your own considerations and starting to really take into account the needs
and wishes of another person—which is very socializing and indeed, we begin
to learn many of the techniques of how to get along with people of the
opposite gender from the time that they were children, and that’s a very
important part of going to high school and being in college, is learning how
to deal with persons who have really kind of a radical outlook upon life as
opposed to our own when we deal with persons of the opposite gender. So to
that extent, it’s really very expansive and certainly very beneficial. Now,
of course, you’re likely to go steady, as they call it, with five, six, maybe
a dozen people before such time as you pick one, settle down and think,
“Well, this is the one I’m going to get along with. Probably the best in my
lifetime.” That’s a fairly chancy sort of thing, in
any event. Because what you are today and what you
are ten years later are really almost two entirely different things. It’s hard to believe sometimes how much your philosophy
can change except in retrospecting to see how much
you’ve changed from what you were. You don’t know
what your marriage partner is going to be ten or twenty years hence, and you
don’t even know what you’re going to be ten or twenty years hence. But you’re both in the process of growing and you both can
enhance one another’s development from the kinds of considerations that you
have to take into account in doing anything in partnership with another
person. And that’s a very intimate relationship, and
was designed to be an intimate relationship. Christ
had a great deal to say about the importance of marriage and that you hold to
that one person to whom you have made those commitments. He had quite a few
admonitions against casualness or adultery and things of that sort, and also had some complaints about Jewish law relative to
the ease of divorcement. And indeed, the one-on-one
relationship rather than multiple marriages which are condoned in other
cultures where a man might have three or four wives or something of that
sort, He didn’t feel that that was as valuable as the person who just had one
mate. Although the Brotherhoods, I know, recognize the fact
that in some cultures where the men are likely to be killed off in battle or
in the hunt, that as a social way of taking care of the widows and orphans,
that you are assigned by the chief to take on another wife or something to take
over the family of one who had fallen in battle, or for other reasons. But certainly, the experience of loving a person
intensely, being dependent upon the growth that that person can afford you
personally, is a very essential item to the Brotherhoods’ idea of how we
evolve from being kind of egocentric as we’re teenagers, for instance. We’re having so much trouble trying to figure out who we
are in the world that we begin to see the world as something which is
impinging upon us and how we’re defending against it, rather than being
outgoing and giving to other people. And as you become a parent and you are
interested in another person as much as if this other person were your own
flesh, that what is in the interest of the other person is certainly to your
best interest, and to keep those kinds of ideas in mind. There
have been some old concepts which have been passed
along the past few thousand years because of the patriarchal cultures of the
Greeks, the Romans and Jews, who had very strong ideas that men were the ones
who were important. Women weren’t even supposed to
be in the synagogue or hardly could be tolerated in churches, and things of
that sort. That they were lesser people. Some of
those ideas have persisted down even to our age, and of course, there’s a great deal of change occurring socially at the
present time to break that error. And it’s not easy
for any of the people who are concerned, and that’s all of us. We’re watching these changes taking place. And men who
thought traditionally that the Bible is handing down a certain way to behave
towards women and how women were supposed to subordinate themselves, and
they’re seeing that women are not wanting to do that. And
I certainly don’t say that they should in any way. But
they’re confused at the present time. How am I supposed to maintain the man’s
position as handed down through the Bible for such a long time when this
woman won’t subordinate herself? I’m
less of a man as a result of this. And it worries
them whether their male friends are supporting them in this idea or
criticizing them for not being the ruler and slapping down the wife to her
proper place and things of that sort. Or if he’s
just concerned with this privately without discussing anything with anybody
else; it’s still a thing that’s keeping him in a state of turmoil. Women aren’t entirely sure of their new role either, and not
entirely certain that they’re going in the right direction. They’re kind of torn between being a mother and a career person.
How important is the marriage in comparison to one’s own self-development, as
if somehow or other they’re opposed to one another.
These are questions which both sides are wrestling with mightily at eh
present time. I think it allows people to feel that if they’re
running into some kind of difficulty, that they should put an end to the
marriage right now, because obviously, it’s not working out and everybody is
not optimally happy at the moment or the time. So therefore, it must be a bad
marriage. Just in the process of people adjusting to one
another’s needs—and the needs change as well as one’s personal
philosophy—there has to be regular give and take, and there are times which
might last for a year or even two years while people are trying to sort out
what they are vis-a-vis to one another
philosophically and emotionally, and their place in their societal system. But somehow
or other, they seem to work through it if they keep slugging away at it. But that’s not new. Marriages have been going through
those kinds of things ever since there has been marriage. At one time, really
not very long ago, it was just an absolute rule you did not get divorced, and
if you did get divorced, you were just kind of on the outside of society. I remember all the time I was going through high school and college,
those were the rules. You just did not get divorced;
and if you did, the price that you paid was extremely high. Now, it’s a lot easier. I don’t know
if it’s better, but it is easier to get a divorce without having to somehow
suffer the stigma of that for the rest of your life. But I think that one should try to understand the other
persons’ point of view. One needs sometimes to consult specialists who are
able to counsel the people who are experiencing these turmoils
in their relationship. They just about get one problem solved, and maybe they
have their first child, and that creates a whole new
set of pressures and problems. But it’s always been
that way. People aren’t somehow suddenly discovering
that the children are difficult to rear. They always have been. And parents always have been running scared because they
didn’t really know what was the right thing to do. And
parents have always felt inadequate, even though they keep up a good front so
far as everyone else is concerned; particularly to the child. but that’s just inherent in learning how to live, two
people together, hopefully for a lifetime. And of
course, the fact that it means so much, each one to the other, has a very
intense kind of a situation when anything seems to be going wrong, or if the
romance somehow is beginning to wane, which obviously, it must change. But people go through more panic today, I think, than they
did in the past. I think, say fifty years ago, a hundred years ago, these
were kind of expected things. You were forewarned of,
Nothing goes on exactly the say way forever. Things do change and you’ll just stick it out just like everybody else does. Not
only were there social pressures, but economic pressures that kept people
together. And with those being removed now, people
sometimes feel that if there’s a little difficulty, that they must not be
meant for one another, and it’s not worth all this trouble. That happiness is
the name of the game in a lifetime; you need to go hook up with somebody new who’s going to give you happiness. Most people who quit
somebody because the other person wasn’t making them
happy usually find that the next person makes them just as not happy, and it
has to reside within the individual as to what the level of their joy or
sense of self-esteem or completion is. Indeed, if you are
in a very difficult situation that seems to go on and on, there are more
basic conflicts than there are good things, and you’re destroying one another
because of your inability to get along with one another and you’re destroying
the children at the same time, then perhaps the best thing to do is to
separate from one another and no longer drive one another crazy.
Because you can actually be driven to drink and the
inability to function like a normal human being. But
then again, those are things which are individual.
Some people get married, and they are just happy as two peas in a pod for
fifty years or sixty years, and there are others who are just as happy as can
be for maybe five or seven years, and after that, there doesn’t seem to be
anything that they have in common and they’re constantly in conflict. That’s part of the gamble of tying in with somebody
else—particularly if you’re very young and you haven’t finished coming
anywhere close to growing to where you’re going to become. Because
as I said before when we started out, you can be sure that you’re going to
change, and you’re going to be sure that you’re going to be a different
person ten years hence, and some people turn out to be individuals who are totally
incompatible once it comes to a further development of their philosophy and
experience with life. Those are the times to end it. But that’s fairly rare, and I think most people can make
a good bargain together, and in focusing on the intention of making it work,
actually have it work. Focusing your attention on your mate is the one you
wish to love instead of some other person who looks more exciting at the moment, because that’s always a possibility. The
unknown always has much more promise than what you do know. Very frequently,
the promise is never fulfilled. Maybe you can direct
some direct questions that you have. This is such a condensation, and I’m trying to express where the Brotherhoods are moving,
and the kinds of things that we try to emphasize here at Stelle among our own
people. Question: I guess my
main question was, what degree of compatibility would you expect to have to
consider it a great marriage and what degree of incompatibility leads to
ruination? Richard:
That is very difficult to quantify. Some people are more sensitive to
conflict than others. A little bit can be more than
they can bear. Where others can just enjoy just staying in there and slugging
it out toe to toe and just have a grand time making
up each time. So that’s such an individual kind of
question, I don’t think I can give a universal answer to it. Even if I had a
universal answer, I don’t think I could give it. Question:
Okay. Just one more question. If
you find that most of your day or nighttime or whatever is spent in trying to
achieve compatibility with your mate, does that detract from the time you
might spend developing yourself? Richard: It shouldn’t detract. I mean, you have to compartmentalize
those things to some extent. The whole name of the game of being incarnate is
to grow Egoically. To develop yourself to a higher level than what you are
today. To acquire a still more refined character. To work towards more
nobility of being. That’s the main purpose of
incarnating. And the end object of all this is to
ultimately achieve Adeptship wherein you know how to control all the things
in your environment, as well as yourself. And then
there’s no point—and no need—to incarnate any longer on your continuing
development from Adeptship to Mastership. Although some
Adepts do incarnate. I really do believe that close relationships,
loving relationships, whether they’re with your parents, your children, your
spouse, or just dear friends of the same gender and opposite gender, are all
very important linkages to having a sound psychology; to be emotionally
healthy; to be psychologically mature. And all
relationships have the potential of forming those growth-engendering linkages
which keep us sane. There is no guarantee that any relationship with another
person is supposed to make you happy. But if you can
have contentment in your life, you are truly blessed. Happiness seems to be
dependent on novelty, just by definition. And
there’s all kinds of ways of creating new contexts within a relationship, so
you can explore one another on a far new level that you hadn’t seen before. And that tends to keep things fresh. But
that depends on your inventiveness; your ingenuity; your interest in seeing
more and more of the other person and revealing more and more of yourself. It
requires feeling safe. Intimacy requires of us that we make ourselves
vulnerable, but yet feel safe. So
we do put ourselves at risk whenever we are in any kind of relationship. It’s
real easy just to shut down and just be very closed within yourself and not
have to extend yourself in any way and the other person is made to try to
keep things alive by putting the burden of inspiration on that other person. But that’s a terrible burden to place on that person,
because you’re really not helping under those circumstances. When
we get down to marriage, we get down to the very basics of how you’re able to relate to other human beings. And if you can’t relate to other human beings very well,
you’re probably not going to relate to your spouse very well. And we do need to be socially adept in dealing with other
people so that we can be socially adept with the person who’s going to be
playing a very major role in presumably the rest of our lives. We can expand
on any of these ad infinitum. Question: I was
wondering. I’m getting the message here in Stelle
that divorce is strongly discouraged; however, in certain circumstances, it
may be permissible. However, from reading the Bible, I get the impression
that it is definitely a no-no under any circumstances. Is there an
inconsistency there? Richard: Well,
there has always been room for divorce. If a person is subjected to extreme
cruelty by their spouse or there’s just nothing
happening between them, there has always been room for annulment. Question: Christ says
that any man who divorces his wife and goes with another is committing
adultery. Richard:
He was concerned with the individual who is trying to make a marriage and
then is lusting after somebody else, and finally, because of his lust, says,
“I’ve had enough of this,” or just runs away; disappears or goes someplace
else and you never find him again so he can be with another person, is really
doing a disservice to everyone concerned, and it’s just not fair and it’s not
right. Whether you go to hell
for it is something else again. I think that’s an ecclesiastical
interpretation, which serves to force people who are kind
of childish for a long time to do what the state wanted them to do. But
then again, most people didn’t live much past
twenty-eight or thirty years old, and most people could stand fourteen years
of marriage because they got married at about fourteen. But
when you start talking about thirty or forty years, maybe it’s not for the
greatest good of all concerned. But I don’t know
that for a certainty. Every culture, in every age, has its own unique ways of
looking at things, and we seem to be in a different mode at
the present time than what has been going on for quite a long time. But there have been much more lucid era than ours in the
Christian world. About two centuries ago, things were a heck of a lot worse
than they are today, as far as morality is concerned, or the honoring of
marriage and things of that sort. I’ve looked through those things and struggled with them. We’ve had lots of discussions. The workings are too vague.
If you come right out and say, “You’re going to go to hell for the rest of
eternity if you divorce somebody,” it would have been a lot easier. There it
would have been in black and white. But He was
talking about ideals and not necessarily absolutes. That’s
the nice thing about Moses; he handed down clear-cut things. If you did this,
then this is what happened to you. Jesus was too kind. Moses didn’t give us ten guidelines.
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