Sacred Contracts Quotes

Marriage is a legal contract -- it's not a sacred thing.

when you do not seek or need external approval, you are at your most powerful.

If you have life, you have purpose.

You cannot come to know the depths of the purpose of your life, however, if you are not willing to release those parts of your life that are no longer necessary.

manipulation is the art of making another person’s spirit dance for personal amusement, and only through honoring oneself do we become strong enough to refuse to dance.

As long as you remain present, everything you need is

By learning to identify your energy patterns, you will be able to gain a much greater vision of the meaning and purpose of your many experiences and relationships.

If you sincerely believe that God loves you, then you’re not a victim of anything anymore. It’s happening to open up opportunities for us to become more aligned with our higher purpose. I

Each of us has a dark side, along with our own grace and light. The extent to which we can acknowledge the former while maximizing the latter may determine how we choose to fulfill the terms of our Contract. When the shadow side takes over even one person, the consequences are tragically felt by many.

The seventeenth century is everywhere a time in which the state's power over everything individual increases, whether that power be in absolutist hands or may be considered the result of a contract, etc. People begin to dispute the sacred right of the individual ruler or authority without being aware that at the same time they are playing into the hands of a colossal state power.

To believe in an invisible order, a divine or implicate order, as quantum physics calls it, or the order beneath the disorder that chaos theory describes, is a healthier, more interesting choice than seeing no meaning in life whatsoever.

We need never feel either that we have too far to travel or that we have already arrived and can stop practicing the everyday virtues of compassion and mindfulness.

The Mind, once enlightened, cannot again become dark.” THOMAS PAINE, Common Sense

This fierce defender of private property—this man for whom contracts were to be sacred covenants—expressly denied the sanctity of any agreement that stripped people of their freedom.

[The book, Anna Karenina, is] a mirror held up to the real, grimy, quotidian interactions of married life, of which romance is little more than a passing mood: marriage, that slippery social contract that, if it works at all, depends more on indulgent disconnection than on some kind of sacred accord.

Before we’re born, we select a series of goals and lessons for our time on Earth. This is a form of sacred contract that determines what type of life we’re going to live.

For reasons having largely to do with conflicting political agendas and fourteen centuries of animosity between Muslims, Christians, and Jews, we also have a distorted impression of the teachings of Islam. The fact is that Islamic teachings are based on the same moral and ethical principles that lie at the heart of both Judaism and Christianity.

A good marriage is not a contract between two persons but a sacred covenant between three.”1

It is essential for us to recognize the childhood wounds associated with grief and to find our way back into the current moment. Only in the adult body will we be able to cultivate a mindful awareness of when to expand into the embrace of a friend or a loving community and when to contract into the sanctuary of our solitude, “as beautifully . . . coordinated as birdwings.

Spiritual transformation results when you move from seeing things strictly in physical, material terms to seeing that there are reasons why things happen as they do—that there is a greater plan behind them.

Our individual souls hum actively within a kind of global soul comprising all life on the planet. Our words, thoughts, deeds, and visions influence our individual health just as they affect the health of everyone around us. As a vital part of a larger, universal spirit, we each have been put here on earth to fulfill a Sacred Contract that enhances our personal spiritual growth while contributing to the evolution of the entire global soul.

Religion, then, is far from "useless." It humanizes violence; it protects man from his own violence by taking it out of his hands, transforming it into a transcendent and ever-present danger to be kept in check by the appropriate rites appropriately observed and by a modest and prudent demeanor. Religious misinterpretation is a truly constructive force, for it purges man of the suspicions that would poison his existence if he were to remain conscious of the crisis as it actually took place. To think religiously is to envision the city's destiny in terms of that violence whose mastery over man increases as man believes he has gained mastery over it. To think religiously (in the primitive sense) is to see violence as something superhuman, to be kept always at a distance and ultimately renounced. When the fearful adoration of this power begins to diminish and all distinctions begin to disappear, the ritual sacrifices lose their force; their potency is not longer recognized by the entire community. Each member tries to correct the situation individually, and none succeeds. The withering away of the transcendental influence means that there is no longer the slightest difference between a desire to save the city and unbridled ambition, between genuine piety and the desire to claim divine status for oneself. Everyone looks on a rival enterprise as evidence of blasphemous designs. Men set to quarreling about the gods, and their skepticism leads to a new sacrificial crisis that will appear - retrospectively, in the light of a new manifestation of unanimous violence - as a new act of divine intervention and divine revenge. Men would not be able to shake loose the violence between them, to make of it a separate entity both sovereign and redemptory, without the surrogate victim. Also, violence itself offers a sort of respite, the fresh beginning of a cycle of ritual after a cycle of violence. Violence will come to an end only after it has had the last word and that word has been accepted as divine. The meaning of this word must remain hidden, the mechanism of unanimity remain concealed. For religion protects man as long as its ultimate foundations are not revealed. To drive the monster from its secret lair is to risk loosing it on mankind. To remove men's ignorance is only to risk exposing them to an even greater peril. The only barrier against human violence is raised on misconception. In fact, the sacrificial crisis is simply another form of that knowledge which grows grater as the reciprocal violence grows more intense but which never leads to the whole truth. It is the knowledge of violence, along with the violence itself, that the act of expulsion succeeds in shunting outside the realm of consciousness. From the very fact that it belies the overt mythological messages, tragic drama opens a vast abyss before the poet; but he always draws back at the last moment. He is exposed to a form of hubris more dangerous than any contracted by his characters; it has to do with a truth that is felt to be infinitely destructive, even if it is not fully understood - and its destructiveness is as obvious to ancient religious thought as it is to modern philosophers. Thus we are dealing with an interdiction that still applies to ourselves and that modern thought has not yet invalidated. The fact that this secret has been subjected to exceptional pressure in the play [Bacchae] must prompt the following lines: May our thoughts never aspire to anything higher than laws! What does it cost man to acknowledge the full sovereignty of the gods? That which has always been held as true owes its strength to Nature.

I'm sorry, I don't understand. Could you tell me more about this 'profanity'?" Mrs. Miller nodded at my dictionary. "I'll assume you don't need a definition. Perhaps you'd prefer an example?" "That would be so helpful, thank you very much." Without missing a beat, Mrs. Miller rattled off a stream of obscenities so fully and completely unexpected that I fell off my chair. Mothers were defiled, their male and female children, as well as any and all offspring who just happened to be born out of wedlock. AS for the sacred union that produced these innocent babes, the pertinent bodily appendages were catalogued by a list of names so profoundly scurrilous that a grizzled marine, conceived in a brothel and dying of a disease he contracted in one, would've wished he'd been born as smooth as a Ken doll. The act itself was invoked with such a verity of incestuous, scatological, bestial, and just plain bizarre variations that that same marine would've given up on the Ken doll fantasy, and wished instead that all life had been confined to a single-cell stage, forever free of taint of mitosis, let alone procreation. Somewhere during the course of all this I noticed I'd snapped my pencil in half, and now I used the two ends to gouge out my brain. "Guhhhhhh guhhhhh guhhhhhh guhhhhh guhhhhh," I said, by which I meant: "You have shattered whatever tattered remnants of pedagogical propriety I still possessed, and my tender young mind has broken beneath the strain." Nervously, I climbed back into my chair, the two halves of my pencil sticking out of ears like an arrow that had shot clean through my head. Mrs. Miller allowed herself a small self-congratulatory smile.

Otto Piper points out that “there is always an element of mistrust implied in the marriage contract.”2 The reason we promise to love each other “till death do us part” is precisely because our society knows that such a promise will be sorely tried—otherwise, the promise wouldn’t be necessary! We don’t make public promises that we will regularly nourish our bodies with food or buy ourselves adequate clothing. Everyone who enters the marriage relationship will come to a point where the marriage starts to “rub” somewhat adversely. It is for these times that the promise is made. Anticipating struggle, God has ordained a remedy, holding us to our word of commitment. In this struggle we become nobler people.

Finally, when the State close to ruin subsists only on an illusory and vain form, when the social bond is broken in all hearts, when the barest interest brazenly assumes the sacred name of public good; then the general will grows mute, everyone, prompted by secret motives, no more states opinions as a Citizen than if the State had never existed, and iniquitous decrees with no other goal than particular interest are falsely passed under the name of Laws.

As concerning marriage, besides that it is a covenant, the entrance into which only is free, but the continuance in it forced and compulsory, having another dependence than that of our own free will, and a bargain commonly contracted to other ends, there almost always happens a thousand intricacies in it to unravel, enough to break the thread and to divert the current of a lively affection: whereas friendship has no manner of business or traffic with aught but itself. Moreover, to say truth, the ordinary talent of women is not such as is sufficient to maintain the conference and communication required to the support of this sacred tie; nor do they appear to be endued with constancy of mind, to sustain the pinch of so hard and durable a knot. And doubtless, if without this, there could be such a free and voluntary familiarity contracted, where not only the souls might have this entire fruition, but the bodies also might share in the alliance, and a man be engaged throughout, the friendship would certainly be more full and perfect; but it is without example that this sex has ever yet arrived at such perfection; and, by the common consent of the ancient schools, it is wholly rejected from it.

I have always thought love the only foundation of happiness in a married state, as it can only produce that high and tender friendship which should always be the cement of this union; and, in my opinion, all those marriages which are contracted from other motives are greatly criminal; they are a profanation of a most holy ceremony, and generally end in disquiet and misery: for surely we may call it a profanation to convert this most sacred institution into a wicked sacrifice to lust or avarice: and what better can be said of those matches to which men are induced merely by the consideration of a beautiful person, or a great fortune?

Many of us have the false idea that a relationship’s purpose is to somehow fulfill our needs and desires. We look to see what we can get out of the relationship instead of what we can put in. Looked at like this, relationships are often little more than a needs exchange. We need this (safety, love, intimacy); a man needs that (security, companionship, sex). When we come across a good fit, both parties tacitly agree to do a trade and call it love. This transaction-based relationship model is why so many relationships feel empty and dead. They are completely devoid of anything real and intimate. After the initial rush of excitement is over, they’re more like business contracts than sacred unions. Let’s face it. We’ve all been conditioned to use relationships for the wrong reasons: to end loneliness, relieve depression, recover from a previous breakup, or find security. The problem is that this is not what relationships are for. Relationships are a spiritual opportunity for personal evolution. There is no greater arena for discovering your capacity for love, forgiveness, compassion, personal greatness, and full self-expression. Nowhere else will you meet the grandest and smallest parts of yourself. Nowhere else will you confront your self-imposed limits to intimacy. Nowhere else can you forgive so deeply or love so purely. This is relationship’s real purpose: to serve the mutual growth and soulful expression of each individual. It’s a chance to share your enthusiasm for being alive and give of yourself to another. Relationships provide the opportunity to shed light on any area within you that remains cloaked in fear and uncertainty, to hold a vision of another’s greatness so that he may step into the magnificence his soul is yearning to express. In this way, relationship becomes the ultimate tool for personal discovery and spiritual growth. When we engage in relationship to see what we can put into it rather than what we can get out of it, our whole lives transform. We no longer see our partners as antagonists. We see them as teachers and allies who are here to help us discover and experience our glory.

The preconventional level of moral reasoning, which develops during our first nine years of life, considers rules as fixed and absolute. In the first of its two stages (the stage of obedience and punishment), we determine whether actions are right or wrong by whether or not they lead to a punishment. In the second stage (the stage of individualism and exchange), right and wrong are determined by what brings rewards. The desires and needs of others are important, but only in a reciprocal sense—“You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.” Morality at this level is governed by consequence.   The second level of moral reasoning starts in adolescence, and continues into early adulthood. It sees us starting to consider the intention behind behavior, rather than just the consequences. Its first stage, often called the “good boy—nice girl” stage, is when we begin classifying moral behavior as to whether it will help or please. Being seen as good becomes the goal. In the second stage (the law and order stage), we start to equate “being good” with respecting authority and obeying the law, believing that this protects and sustains society.   The third level of moral development is when we move beyond simple conformity, but Kohlberg suggested that only around 10–15 percent of us ever reach this level. In its first stage (the social contract and individual rights stage), we still respect authority, but there is a growing recognition that individual rights can supersede laws that are destructive or restrictive. We come to realize that human life is more sacred than just following rules. The sixth and final stage (the stage of universal ethical principles) is when our own conscience becomes the ultimate judge, and we commit ourselves to equal rights and respect for all. We may even resort to civil disobedience in the name of universal principles, such as justice.   Kohlberg’s six-stage theory was considered radical, because it stated that morality is not imposed on children (as psychoanalysts said), nor is it about avoiding bad feelings (as the behaviorists had thought). Kohlberg believed children developed a moral code and awareness of respect, empathy, and love through interaction with others.

Important “round” numbers in the sexagesimal system include the base of 60; its square, 3,600 (602), which the Sumerians called sar or universe; and its fourth power, 12,960,000 (3,60o2 or 604), which has been called “The greatest sacred number in Babylonia … the sar squared.”13 This system was founded, Neugebauer says, on a “decimal substrate” the decimal system, in other words, had been invented first, and interacted with the emerging sexa-gesimality. Thus we find sexagesimal units like 30 or 60 interacting with decimal units such as 5 or I0. Sixty twice, for example, is 120, which times ten is 1,200, a common number in the texts that flow from this tradition. Six gets special prominence as the decimal reduction of 60; from this interplay arise 36 (6 X 6) and 360 (6 X 60), which also have other connections with the system: 360 X 12 = 4,320, and so on. These numbers interact with calendrical units: 60 / 5 (days in Babylonian week) = 12 (months—nations—in a year) 12 X 6 (decimal contraction of 60) = 72 (weeks in a Babylonian year) 5 X 72 = 360 (days in a Babylonian year) 6 X 72 = 432 (a common round number in the tradition)

Marriage is sacred. It was created to be the wedding portrait of Christ and His Bride hung over the blazing fireplace of judgment. A match made in Heaven, a contract signed in blood. In the bond of marriage, we are to stand at the altar of Sacrifice or we're not to stand at all.

I shared with him my deep conviction that life is not a possession. Nor is life merely a contract between the living. Life is a sacred contract between the dead, the living, and the unborn.

Marriage is sacred. It was created to be the wedding portrait of Christ and His Bride hung over the blazing fireplace of judgment. A match made in Heaven, a contract signed in blood.

His grief at your leaving is also his fear of losing the power he has had for lifetimes. Those days are over for him, and he is in turmoil. But if you are to help him on his soul's quest, you will leave him. It is your job--your sacred contract--to free him, and to free yourself.

The Holy Scripture is called the Book of the Old and of the New Testament. When a notary has drawn a contract or other deed, when a testament is confirmed by the death of the testator, there must not be added, withdrawn, or altered, one single word under penalty of falsification. Are not the Holy Scriptures the true testament of the eternal God, drawn by the notaries deputed for this purpose, duly sealed and signed with his blood, confirmed by death? Being such, how can we alter even the smallest point without impiety? “A testament,” says the great Ulpian, “is a just expression of our will as to what we would have done after our death.”898 Our Lord by the Holy Scriptures shows us what we must believe, hope for, love and do, and this by a true expression of his will; if we add, take away or change, it will no longer be the true expression of God’s will. For Our Lord having duly expressed in Scripture his will, if we add anything of our own we shall make the statement go beyond the will of the testator, if we take anything away we shall make it fall short, if we make changes in it we shall set it awry, and it will no longer correspond to the will of the author, nor be a correct statement. When two things exactly correspond, he who changes the one destroys the equality and the correspondence between them. If it be a true statement, whatever right have we to alter it? Our Lord puts a value on the iotas, yea, the mere little points and accents of his holy words. How jealous then is he of their integrity, and what punishment shall they not deserve who violate this integrity! Brethren, says S. Paul,899 (I speak after the manner of man), yet a man’s testament, if it be confirmed, no man despiseth, nor addeth to it. And to show how important it is to learn the Scripture in its exactness he gives an example. To Abraham were the promisesmade, and to his seed. He says not and to his seeds as of many, but as of one; and to thy seed, who is Christ. See, I beg you, how the change from singular to plural would have spoilt the mysterious meaning of this word. The Ephrathites [Ephraimites] said Sibolleth, not forgetting a single letter, but because they did not pronounce it thickly enough, the Galaadites slew them at the fords of Jordan.900 The simple difference of pronunciation in speaking, and in writing the mere transposition of one single point on the letter scin caused the ambiguity, and changing the janin into semol, instead of an ear of wheat expressed a weight or a burden. Whosoever alters or adds the slightest accent in the Scripture is a sacrilegious man and deserves the death of him who dares to mingle the profane with the sacred.

Somewhere in the teachings of every wisdom tradition on earth is the admonition to “make whole that which is broken.” In Judaism, it is tikkun olam, “repair of the world.” It is said that in the eyes of God, an object that has been repaired is more holy than one that is new. There is an interpretation in Judaism of the world as we see it and of how it came to be; it is a retelling of the Genesis story by the sixteenth-century mystic Isaac Luria. In his vision, Luria saw that God filled the entire universe completely and perfectly and that the world could only be created by somehow making a space for life. Luria imagined that God contracted, like a series of containers within containers, and by becoming smaller and smaller, God allowed a new creation to emerge. When the enormous energy and potential of that creation finally exploded outward, sparks of the divine scattered throughout the universe: the universe we see. The teachings that follow from this, in the wisdom tradition of the Kabbalah, tell us that we are to gather the shards and the sparks and bring them back together. This is the meaning of tikkun olam. Olam, or “world,” comes from the same root as hidden, and so the repair we are asked to accomplish requires that we see the sacred hidden within the ordinary — the wholeness that exists in all things, everywhere.

You serve beneath masters,” Vin said. “Harsh men who fear your competence. The only way to keep them from hating you is to make certain they don’t pay attention to you. So, you make yourself look small and weak. Not a threat. But sometimes you say the wrong thing, or you let your rebelliousness show.” She turned toward him. He was watching her. “Yes,” he finally said, turning to look back over the city. “They hate you,” Vin said quietly. “They hate you because of your powers, because they can’t make you break your word, or because they worry that you are too strong to control.” “They become afraid of you,” OreSeur said. “They grow paranoid — terrified, even as they use you, that you will take their place. Despite the Contract, despite knowing that no kandra would break his sacred vow, they fear you. And men hate what they fear.” “And so,” Vin said, “they find excuses to beat you. Sometimes, even your efforts to remain harmless seem to provoke them. They hate your skill, they hate the fact that they don’t have more reasons to beat you, so they beat you.” OreSeur turned back to her. “How do you know these things?” he demanded. Vin shrugged. “That’s not only how they treat kandra, OreSeur.

In such an endeavor it is not enough to say that history unfolds by processes too complex for reductionistic analysis. That is the white flag of the secular intellectual, the lazy modernist equivalent of The Will of God. On the other hand, it is too early to speak seriously of ultimate goals, such as perfect green-belted cities and robot expeditions to the nearest stars. It is enough to get Homo sapiens settled down and happy before we wreck the planet. A great deal of serious thinking is needed to navigate the decades immediately ahead. We are gaining in our ability to identify options in the political economy most likely to be ruinous. We have begun to probe the foundations of human nature, revealing what people intrinsically most need, and why. We are entering a new era of existentialism, not the old absurdist existentialism of Kierkegaard and Sartre, giving complete autonomy to the individual, but the concept that only unified learning, universally shared, makes accurate foresight and wise choice possible. In the course of all of it we are learning the fundamental principle that ethics is everything. Human social existence, unlike animal sociality, is based on the genetic propensity to form long-term contracts that evolve by culture into moral precepts and law. The rules of contract formation were not given to humanity from above, nor did they emerge randomly in the mechanics of the brain. They evolved over tens or hundreds of millennia because they conferred upon the genes prescribing them survival and the opportunity to be represented in future generations. We are not errant children who occasionally sin by disobeying instructions from outside our species. We are adults who have discovered which covenants are necessary for survival, and we have accepted the necessity of securing them by sacred oath. The search for consilience might seem at first to imprison creativity. The opposite is true. A united system of knowledge is the surest means of identifying the still unexplored domains of reality. It provides a clear map of what is known, and it frames the most productive questions for future inquiry. Historians of science often observe that asking the right question is more important than producing the right answer. The right answer to a trivial question is also trivial, but the right question, even when insoluble in exact form, is a guide to major discovery. And so it will ever be in the future excursions of science and imaginative flights of the arts.

A prime example of these rogue-events, which are both farcical and terrifying, is the recent bird flu scare (where the terrorists were wild ducks!). There is no greater masquerade than this global panic, than the sacred union in panic. The international community becomes hectic and epileptic from the virus of terror and the terror of viruses. Terror is multiplied by the grotesque profusion of security measures that end up causing perverse autoimmune effects: the antibodies turn against the body and cause more damage than the virus. Without real solidarity between nations, the specter of Absolute Evil must be raised up as an ersatz Universal, an emergency solution to symbolic misery. When traditional contracts and symbolic pacts, the universal and the particular no longer function, a form like a conspiracy takes brutal shape, a plot in which everyone is involuntarily involved. Partaking in the conspiracy is not based on anything, on any value, other than delirious self-defense, in response to the total loss of the imaginary's immunity... In fact, the virus is a "cosa mentale" and contamination happens so quickly because the mental immunity, the symbolic defenses are long lost. A panic space can take hold in this liquidation, one to which the entire global information system also belongs for another reason, the system of networks and instant diffusion - a non-Euclidean space where all rational, preventive, prophylactic countermeasures are almost automatically turned against themselves through their own excesses. Security is the best medium for terror.

Our life’s mission, or Contract, cannot be defined or measured simply by our external life, however. Your purpose is not only your career or hobby or romantic relationship. A Contract is your overall relationship to your personal power and your spiritual power.

(Here, the author almost wishes to demur; here, at this moment close to climax, the union of at least one and perhaps two intensely private men, who would later give so much of themselves to so many. Here, it is tempting to turn away because for them, this moment was sacred, a marriage of sorts, a contract, a vow, but also a secret, tightly kept between the two of them, against the world. And yet this moment, when they vibrated together, their very different bodies singing the very same song—they were not merely a pair of keys, struck, in an empty room. There would be not only the fingers—theirs, groping for each other—to press the keys but also the ears to hear it, ours, though we could not possibly know what we had heard. There would be oscillations, because of what happened in that room. There would be repercussions.)

(Here, the author almost wishes to demur; here, at this moment close to climax, the union of at least one and perhaps two intensely private men, who would later give so much of themselves to so many. Here, it is tempting to turn away because for them, this moment was sacred, a marriage of sorts, a contract, a vow, but also a secret, tightly kept between the two of them, against the world. And yet this moment, when they vibrated together, their very different bodies singing the very same song—they were not merely a pair of keys, struck, in an empty room. There would be not only the fingers—theirs, groping for each other—to press the keys but also the ears to hear it, ours, though we could not possibly know what we had heard. There would be oscillations, because of what happened in that room. There would be repercussions.)

(Here, the author almost wishes to demur; here, at this moment close to climax, the union of at least one and perhaps two intensely private men, who would later give so much of themselves to so many. Here, it is tempting to turn away because for them, this moment was sacred, a marriage of sorts, a contract, a vow, but also a secret, tightly kept between the two of them, against the world. And yet this moment, when they vibrated together, their very different bodies singing the very same song—they were not merely a pair of keys, struck, in an empty room. There would be not only the fingers—theirs, groping for each other—to press the keys but also the ears to hear it, ours, though we could not possibly know what we had heard. There would be oscillations, because of what happened in that room. There would be repercussions.)

… sarha. In its original verbform, sarha meant ‘to let the cattle out to graze freely’. It was subsequently humanized to suggest the action of a walker who went roaming without constraint or fixed plan. One might think the English equivalent to be a ‘stroll’, an ‘amble’ or a ‘ramble’, but these words don’t quite catch the implications of escape, delight and improvisation that are carried by sarha. ‘Wander’ comes close, with its word-shadow of ‘wonder’, as does the Scots word ‘stravaig’, meaning to ramble without set goals or destination, but best of all perhaps is ‘saunter’, from the French sans terre, which is a contraction of à la sainte terre, meaning ‘to the sacred place’; i.e. ‘a walking pilgramage’. Saunter and sarha both have surface connotations of aimlessness, and smuggled connotations of the spiritual. 212

Fate and Destiny are two forces locked within every Sacred Contract. One choice belongs to your ego and the other to your soul. The ego chooses out of fear, and thus whatever the person creates will lead to a fated outcome. But the soul follows interior guidance and creates through Divine instructions— that’s how Destiny unfolds.

The Religious Man or Woman is a popular story option in which we try to reduce the wildness of life by constructing a system of promises and rewards, a contract that will obligate God to grant us exemption from the Arrows. It really doesn’t matter what the particular group bargain is—doctrinal adherence, moral living, or some sort of spiritual experience— the desire is the same: taming God in order to tame life. Never mind those deep yearnings of the soul; never mind the nagging awareness that God is not cooperating. If the system isn’t working, it’s because we’re not doing it right.

John O’Donohue talks about the Buddhist tradition of the kalyana-mitra, or “noble friend.” Your noble friend, he says, “will not accept pretension but will gently and very firmly confront you with your own blindness. No one can see life totally. As there is a blind spot in the retina of the human eye, there is also in the soul a blind side where you are not able to see. Therefore you must depend on the one you love to see for you what you cannot see yourself.

The language of this mystery school is one of spiritual alchemy. With it we’ll learn to transform heavy physical relationships and emotions into spiritual gold. This process involves prayer and contemplation, and it also requires examining all the fragments of your life experiences and relationships. You’ll be researching your archetypes’ energy chemistry—how they express and assert themselves in and through your life. By discovering and working with your individual archetypal companions, your connections to the cosmic forces directing your life, you will consciously affect the course of your life.

Try This: Forgive Yourself Step 1: Go somewhere where you won’t be interrupted. The less distraction for anything you apply in this manual, the better. My favorite place for this is in nature. At the very least, choose someplace that makes you feel good. Step 2: When you are ready, write down all that you hold against yourself. Every single thing. Please don’t hold anything back. This is your healing. It is sacred. Whatever emotions rise, feel fully and let them pass. You are worth the magic you will experience afterward. Step 3: Once the emotions have passed, remember that you are a human being. Therefore, it’s your nature to make mistakes. It’s the contract of existing on this planet. Sit with that for a moment. Step 4: Write down that you forgive yourself. Read the whole thing out loud. Again and again and again until you feel something inside shift. You might need to write it down multiple times to feel the shift. If so, then write it, read it out loud, and repeat until you’re ready to let go. Remember, you are worth this. Step 5: Take the paper you wrote on and destroy it. You can tear it up. You can throw it in the ocean or lake or river. You can chuck it in the garbage or set it on fire or flush it down the toilet. You can put it on a rocket and launch it into outer space. It really doesn’t matter how you destroy it. You’re throwing away everything you held against yourself. The act itself is symbolic. It’s the purity of intention that matters. Let this action take the paper—and all that it represents—away from you. Let life take it from you. Let love take it from you. Let it go. You are forgiven by the one person you need it from most—yourself.

The analogy between infertile heterosexuals and same-sex couples misses the point. The extension of marriage to infertile heterosexual couples serves not to deprecate same-sex couples, but to preserve the equal status of women in marriage. A test for fertility would be unfair to women because all women spend most of their adult lives in a state of infertility. Fertile women are infertile most days of a month, and postmenopausal women are always infertile. A fertility requirement would also render women susceptible to enormous abuse by men, providing a ready excuse for men who would trade in older women for nubile brides. The status of women in marriage would be intolerably diminished through this practice. Infertility is less common among men, as they can sire children into old age. Moreover, men, like women, typically do not discover that they are infertile until they attempt to sire children, at which time they ought already to be married. A measure that serves primarily to protect women and to preserve their equal status within the institution of marriage is not a measure that is an appropriate basis by which to judge that the same should go for same-sex couples. One of the great challenges men and women face in marriage is in coming to terms with their differences while respecting the status of the other as an equal. Acceptance of infertility is a measure promoting this end. A measure to accommodate the reality of sex-based difference in marriage is no reason to extend marriage to same-sex couples. Moreover, accommodation for infertility in no way diminishes the reality that the inequality of the parent-child relationship is what differentiates marriage from other contractual relationships. It is the parent-child relation, as it emerges from sexual difference and procreation, which elevates marriage above a mere contract, and renders it a sacred duty.

He folded back the hem of her housedress. Peeled the wet underpants from her skin and moved them down over her pale knees and her small feet and then dropped them on the floor. He could hear the voices of the children playing in the tree outside. He gently pushed her thighs apart and saw immediately that the baby had already begun to crown. Her skin was paler than his wife’s was, even in midwinter. He gave her his hand to get her through the next contraction, keeping his arm steady as she squeezed. He spread the fingers of the other over her taut belly. Mr. Persichetti wore a silver Saint Christopher’s medal around his neck and kept a Sacred Heart scapular in his pocket, but when Mary Keane asked him, catching her breath, “Who’s the patron saint of women in labor?” he shrugged. He told her he only knew Saint Dymphna was the patron of the insane. He’d had the

He folded back the hem of her housedress. Peeled the wet underpants from her skin and moved them down over her pale knees and her small feet and then dropped them on the floor. He could hear the voices of the children playing in the tree outside. He gently pushed her thighs apart and saw immediately that the baby had already begun to crown. Her skin was paler than his wife’s was, even in midwinter. He gave her his hand to get her through the next contraction, keeping his arm steady as she squeezed. He spread the fingers of the other over her taut belly. Mr. Persichetti wore a silver Saint Christopher’s medal around his neck and kept a Sacred Heart scapular in his pocket, but when Mary Keane asked him, catching her breath, “Who’s the patron saint of women in labor?” he shrugged. He told her he only knew Saint Dymphna was the patron of the insane. He’d had the story from an Irish priest assigned to Creedmoor. “A sad case himself,” Mr. Persichetti said, and gently pulled the damp hem of her dress back over her thighs. For a moment he found himself incapable of remembering Mr. Keane’s face, although they’d been neighbors for perhaps ten years. Nor could he remember another conversation he’d had with this woman stretched before him now on her living-room couch, her hair damp and her eyes a kind of gray, or green. He took her hand as if she were his child, or his own wife. “Apparently,” he said, “this Saint Dymphna was the daughter of an Irish chieftain, a pagan. But she had a beautiful Christian mother.” Gray eyes or green, he thought they were the one thing that might have made her pretty when she was young. “So the mother dies.” He paused only briefly. “When the girl’s about fourteen. And the chieftain goes crazy and tells his servants to go out and find another beautiful woman who resembled his dead wife so he can marry her.” He paused again to touch her

Muhammad’s followers have not always maintained his reforms or abided by his teachings, just as followers of other great mystical leaders, including Jesus, have not.

Many social and political changes have swept the world clean of the apprehension of sacred things: the rejection of custom and ceremony; the conversion of marriage into a defeasible contract; the relaxing of the laws governing, sexual conduct and obscenity; the decline of faith and saintliness. As those changes take their effect, the experience of erotic love becomes darigerous and uncertain in its outcome. Our responsibility retreats further from the confused terrain of sexual experience, and threatens even to void it of desire. Hence, it might be said, my ability to reflect, in so neutral and philosophical a fashion, on the nature of this phenomenon is perhaps already an index of its decline: of the fact that desire does not, now, have the importance for us that formerly caused men to conceal it in poetry or overcome it through prayer. What we understand of our condition may also pass from us in the act of understanding. For we were never meant to have knowledge of this thing; we were meant only to be subject to its command. No phenomenon, perhaps, illustrates more profoundly the great poetical utterance of Hegel; that When philosophy paints its grey in grey, then has a shape of life grown old. By philosophy's grey in grey it cannot be rejuvenated but only understood. The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the gathering of the dusk. On the other hand, it is a century and a half since Hegel wrote those words, and life goes on.

This is not all. Together with the absurdity proper to democratizing the marriage rite and imposing it on all, there is an inconsistency in Catholic doctrine when it claims that the rite, as well as being indissoluble, renders natural unions “sacred”—which represents one incongruence associating with another. Through precise, dogmatic premises, the “sacred” is here reduced to a mere manner of speech. It is well known that Christian and Catholic attitudes are characterized by the antithesis between “flesh” and spirit, by a theological hatred for sex, due to the illegitimate extension to ordinary life of a principle valid at best for a certain type of ascetic life. With sex being presented as something sinful, marriage has been conceived as a lesser evil, a concession to human weakness for those who cannot choose chastity as a way of life, and renounce sex. Not being able to ban sexuality altogether, Catholicism has tried to reduce it to a mere biological fact, allowing its use in marriage only for procreation. Unlike certain ancient traditions, Catholicism has recognized no higher value, not even a potential one, in the sexual experience taken in itself. There is lacking any basis for its transformation in the interests of a more intense life, to integrate and elevate the inner tension of two beings of different sexes, whereas it is in exactly these terms that one should conceive of a concrete “sacralization” of the union and the effect of a higher influence involved in the rite. On the other hand, since the marriage rite has been democratized, the situation could not be otherwise even if the premises were different; otherwise, it would be necessary to suppose an almost magical power in the rite to automatically elevate the sexual experiences of any couple to the level of a higher tension, of a transforming intoxication that alone could lift it beyond the “natural” plane. The sexual act would constitute the primary element, whereas procreation would appear absolutely secondary and belonging to the naturalistic plane. As a whole, whether through its conception of sexuality, or through its profanation of the marriage rite as something put in everyone’s reach and even rendered obligatory for any Catholic couple, religious marriage itself is reduced to the mere religious sanction of a profane, unbreakable contract. Thus the Catholic precepts about the relations between the sexes reduce everything to the plane of a restrained, bourgeois mediocrity: tamed, procreative animality within conformist limits that have not been fundamentally changed by certain hesitant, fringe concessions made for the sake of “updating” at the Second Vatican Council.