Quote from ShoeshineBoy:
Again, I completely disagree.
First of all, a good marriage is arguably the most wonderful thing down here on this rocky planet. It is all the best that the earth has to offer - love, support, friendship, romance and, yes, sex - rolled into one relationship. The physical, mental and spiritual all fold together and overlap. And sex is a part of that wonderful intimacy that goes hand in hand with all of this. You cannot split out sex from this kind of a relationship and say it doesn't matter.
You get points for arguing, correctly, that a good marriage is arguably the most wonderful thing down here on this rocky planet.
My congratulations to you for seeing that it is all the best the earth has to offer. Some of these marriages are said to be "made in heaven".
I simply teach that the most wonderful thing on earth is not worthy of you as Christ, which
is heaven.
Let's examine more carefully what this is all about, this thing called "love".
Really, Christ is love. All else is a substitute. Ultimately, all is Christ, seen truly, or seen as a substitute, transformed into this that and the other. Christ is transformed into substitutes by his own predilections. Basically, Christ always gets what he asks for. Me merely thinks or believes and he recieves. He is denied nothing, even what is false. Love is the giving of what is asked. And Christ always gives what is asked. There is a way of asking however, that adulterates the meaning of love by introducing separations, divisions, and privacy. And all of these adulterations are symbolized by the body. The body is a way to twist and distort the meaning of love. Love's meaning is found in unity and oneness.
If you look at a woman to lust after her, even your wife, you've already changed the meaning of love, and substituted another. And this is because your sight limits Christ to a body, making love meaningless. Love cannot be limited. Once the meaning of love is
adulerated, it is lost to your awareness, and you're left confused about what love is. At that point, "lust", and several other feelings are interpreted as "love".
This means that if you look at anyone as a body, male or female, you "commit adultery" because you are limiting Christ to a body...which is meaningless. As Christ, you have the power to see your counterparts as Christ or as a body. So it's your choice whether to make love meaningless or not. The awareness of the body makes love seem limited. The belief in limited love was the bodies origin, made to limit the unlimited. This is not merely allegorical. The body was made to limit
you. You limit your counterparts through bodies. As Christ, you have the power to release them, or bind them to bodies. What is your choice?
Your counterparts in Christ conform to your desire to see them as bodies. They conform because as Christ, your influence upon your counterparts is limitless. Your counterparts 'give in' because of love, but it is akin to a princess who turns into a pumpkin because she loves you. You see only the pumpkin because you like pumpkin pie. But to get the pie, you must carve out the heart of the pumpkin with a knife. And this is analogous to what is happening when you choose to see bodies instead of Christ. It's very self-serving, and somewhat 'mean'. You could say that there is an element of vengeance involved in such sight, and a desire to see your counterparts suffer.
Is it surprising then when we here from the Apostle K that "love can tear you up inside"? In order to see bodies, you must tear up Christ inside, carve out loves heart, and see it on a plate in front of your eyes. Is it love? Well, yes, because you've been given what you've asked for...given to you by Christ, who is love itself. But it is a very twisted form of love, wouldn't you say?
This probably sounds "too cosmic" for you, but only because you underestimate the power of who you are, and the ability to mask what you are doing. The mask does not change the fact that you are Christ, and you have the power to choose what you see and experience. And whatever you experience, it must come through your counterparts in Christ, for Christ is all there is.
A body is packaged to die. It is a way of seeing your counterparts in a way that they can be killed...to see them as vulnerable. When you vow to be married "until death do us part", all you are really saying is that you will not relent to look at your partner as a body, until that body ages and dies. Now is that what you call "love"?
But the fact is, you have the power to look at your partner as Christ, and thereby influence that partner to choose immortality instead of death. So long as you deny that you are Christ, you will deny you have power to look at your partner as Christ. "Like a drug that makes you blind", marriage is traditionally a choice not to see.
If you see a counterpart in Christ as a body, you set up conditions in which uniting with "him" or "her" is actually impossible. Only mind can unite, and is united. This is how God made Christ, united. But when you carve Christ up into bodies, you are attempting to divide the mind of Christ by making Christ into "man", a plural phenomenon. "What God has joined, let no man put usunder" means that if you truly love your wife, you will see her as one with you, as Christ.
"Holy" matrimony is simply two seeming individuals determined to overcome their blindness by seeing each other as who they are, as Christ. This type of marriage seeks to dissolve the seeming boundaries that separate themselves from each other. It does not accept the "fence" that the body imposes upon their awareness and their experience.
Holy matrimony is a way of saving time. If "two" can manage, even for a single instant, to be truly
together, the whole universe is restored to both. This is the 'ultimate release' that all will one day find in his own way, at his own time. It is accomplished, sometimes by centuries of contemplation or of struggle against temptation. But it is always accomplished upon the recognition that you do not need to do anything. And this is accomplished by withdrawing the value of the body from the mind. Holy matrimony simply combines two with the purpose of becoming one by simultaneous withdrawal of the value of the body from their minds. And this is because there is nothing they can "do" to prepare for their release, except to do nothing.
This is good news for those who understand that sex is nothing. It's a way of doing nothing until nothing is all you want to do. To do anything involves the body. If you recognize you need to nothing, the value of the body leaves your mind, and a door opens through which you slip past centuries of effort, and escape from time.
Time is an illusion. It is holographic and it is finished. The body is a time machine. At no time does the body exist at all except in the past or in anticipation of the future. It never exists
now. Time controls the body entirely because the insanity of guilt is never wholly in the present. A couple in holy matrimony is interested in seeing their partner, just for an instant, without any past or future. Release is given the instant it is desired.
Many have spent a lifetime preparing for this instant. A couple in holy matrimony saves time by preparing only to wholly desire true togetherness. They do not spend time resisting the nothingness of sex. They do not waste time trying to make the body "holy" either, as if it was some sacred thing. Nor do they spend their lives in contemplation and meditation aimed at detachment from the body. If they did, they would succeed, because of their purpose. Yet such means are tedious and very time consuming. That is, all techniques that look toward the future for release from a state of present unworthiness/inadequacy are time consuming because the instant of release cannot come while a future is anticipated! The couple prepares by giving their allegiance and undivided loyalty to non-body states of mind by affirming they need to nothing for their release.
You see, to see a body is a form of faithlessness. The instant of release comes the moment faith in the body is suspended, withheld and left unused. At that moment, faith gravitates toward what is true about the other. And sight comes to the blind.
When the eyes open, they see Christ. Now, can you imagine how beautiful your partner will look when you can "see" him/her? Nothing you see here, sleeping or waking, comes near such loveliness. And there won't be anything you value more than this...nothing you hold so dear. Nothing in this life that you can ever remember that made your heart sing with joy has ever brought you even a little sample of the happiness this sight will bring you. This sight will show you the Son of God.
All of my teaching leads you to this sight. It is a learning process culminating in a single instant - poof! - your eyes open and you can see. This loveliness is not a fantasy. It is the "real" world, bright and clean and new, with everything sparkling under the open sun. There are no fantasies here that hide the truth. The world you see in time, and this world I am describing are very different. And when you cross the bridge from one to the other, you will wonder that the bridge is so little, and so easy to cross. But it is the meeting place of worlds without much in common, except that they both exist in perception. Those who reach the "real" world of perception will go beyond, enticed by the reflection of truth upon it. Beyond is the realm of knowledge. This is your home, where you came from to visit time. And there you will return upon your choice to do so.
Jesus