The article on marriage, coincidentally following the article on “love”, is short if not sweet. It is, after all, a P-B institution. Marriage sometimes being the ritual outcome of romantic love could hardly be expected to have a wholesome outcome without first experiencing some growth in consciousness. Failing that growth in awareness, marriages will often end badly or endure badly.
Thomas Moore’s description is perhaps not what many of us would like to hear but we will have to admit, it has a ring of truth to it. “Marriage is a rite of passage wrongly understood as a rational life choice. It is not a surface change in living arrangements, but rather a shift in being, in your identity, and entire outlook. Marriage is a shock to the system of each partner; that is its promise and its pain. It can mature you like few other experiences can, but the process is neither easy nor entirely pleasurable. The wedding is part of, and often the end of a period of romance, in which the main factor is a thick and dreamy unconsciousness.”[i]
To balance Moore’s harsh truth we will close this article with the poetic and positive possibilities that Kahlil Gibran holds out for the institution of marriage.
But let there be spaces in your togetherness, and let the winds of the heavens dance between you. Love one another, but make not a bond of love: Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls. Fill each other’s cup but drink not from one cup. Give one another of your bread but eat not from the same loaf. Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone, even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music. [ii]
— Kahlil Gibran
[i] Moore, Thomas. Dark Nights of the Soul. New York: Gotham, 2004, p. 148.
[ii] Gibran, Kahlil. The Prophet. New York: Knopf, 1923, pp. 15-16.
