-
The circulatory system in the physical body
corresponds to the affective
organ in the spiritual body, whose operations give us the subjective experience of
feeling and willing. Feelings in the spiritual body correspond
to the circulatory system in the physical body, because feelings nourish the
life of experience. Feeling and willing give us
-
an affective consummatory life such as needs, wants,
desires, satisfactions, pleasures, interests, attractions, etc. (as well as
their opposites),
and
-
an affective conative life such as intentions,
motives, purposes, endeavors, resolve, compassion, love, etc. (as well as
their opposites)
The respiratory system corresponds to the cognitive
organ whose operations give us the subjective life of thinking, reasoning,
and intelligence. Thoughts in the spiritual body, that is, the operations of
the cognitive organ, correspond to the respiratory system in the physical body,
because thoughts guide our feelings and clarifies them, just as oxygen cleans
and purifies the blood. Thoughts give us
-
a cognitive appraising life through memory,
imagination, words, meaning, concepts, topics, knowledge, logic, common sense,
conversation, etc.
and
-
a cognitive planning life through rational
reasoning, inventiveness, predictions, hypotheses, fantasies, schedules,
blueprints, management policies, etc.
The nervous-skeletal system corresponds to the sensorimotor
organ whose operations give us the subjective life of sensing the
environment outside the body and of acting upon that environment through
motor determinations. Sensations and motor determinations in the spiritual
body correspond to the nervous system in the physical body, because
sensations give us the life of experiencing the world outside of us and motor
determinations give us the ability to make our bodies move and interact with the
environment. Sensations and motor determinations give us
-
a sensory noticing life such as seeing, hearing,
tasting, touching, pleasure, pain, heat, cold, etc.
and
-
a motor execution life such as moving, pushing,
pulling, dancing, chewing, verbalizing, writing, drawing, etc.
Here is then a summary of the exact correspondence
between mental anatomy and physical anatomy (try to memorize this after you
studied the details given above):
-
an affective consummatory life in the spiritual
body (= circulatory veins in the physical body)
-
an affective optimizing life in the spiritual body
(= circulatory arteries in the physical body)
-
a cognitive appraising life in the spiritual body
(= respiratory inhaling in the physical body)
-
a cognitive planning life in the spiritual body (=
respiratory exhaling in the physical body)
-
a sensory noticing life in the spiritual body (=
nervous afferent input in the physical body)
-
a motor execution life in the spiritual body (=
nervous efferent output in the physical body)
The affective life of feelings cohere together as a
cumulative whole called the affective self.
The cognitive life of thoughts cohere together as a
cumulative whole called the cognitive self.
The sensorimotor life of sensations and motor determinations
cohere together as a cumulative whole called the sensorimotor self.
Every person can therefore be studied, described, and
understood as a threefold self.
Gender
behavior in marriage is defined in this course along all three interacting
domains of the individual's threefold self. The individual's affective
self
operates the feelings and motivations we maintain in dating or in marriage
relationships. The individual's cognitive self operates the
thinking and reasoning we do in these relationships. The individual's
sensorimotor self
operates the sensations, perceptions, and motor acts we perform in gender
relationships. The category of "motor acts" includes overt verbal behavior
(discourse, talk) and non-linguistic behaviors (expressions, appearance, style).
Be aware however that motor acts and talking occur not from themselves but from
cognitive acts (our thinking and lifestyle philosophy), and these in turn occur
from our affective acts, which are motivations and needs that guide our thinking
towards goals. Affective acts (A), cognitive acts (C), and
Sensorimotor acts
(S) form a
perfect synergy between feelings (A), thoughts (C), and actions with their
sensations (S). This is called the
threefold self or person.
In other
words, each of us is involved in gender relationships in which we operate along
three interconnected domains of behavior. The deepest and most
intimate and influential is the affective operation (A) in which we maintain selected motivations
and desires in accordance with our primary needs and satisfactions (A). These
affective operations in our mind are the most influential or determinative
because they select and direct the other two domains. Affective operations guide
and influence the direction of operations in the cognitive self, so that what we
think or how we justify things cognitively, is selective and responsive to our
affective motives.
We entertain and prefer a way of thinking that will
support and promote our motivations and feelings.
In other words, our
cognitive behavior adjusts itself to support our affective behavior. The
affective and the cognitive domains together select and determine the
sensorimotor behavior that eventuate in our overt actions, appearance, words,
and styles. What we do and say amounts to our overt gender behavior, which is
the result of what we think, and that is the result of how we feel and what
motivates us.
Note that we
are often more aware of what we think than of how we feel (or what motivates
us).
In relationships between a man and a woman, women get more practice in
becoming aware of their own feelings and motivations than men are of theirs, who in
comparison, tend to be less aware of their own feelings and motivations. This is
because women are more motivated to spend time and focus to figure out how they
really feel or what they really want. Women tend also to be more aware of the
man's feelings and motivations than the men are of their own feelings and
motivations. This is because women are motivated to form a united couple, while
men tend to be more motivated to maintain their independence and options.
However, this does not mean that men have less feelings than women, as it is
sometimes misrepresented in gender stereotyped thinking. It means that men are
less motivated to discover what are their feelings and the feelings of women. However, as
we shall see, men can learn to acquire this interest, habit and practice.
Note well this
principle:
Both men and women have the same amount of feelings and emotions.
This fact can be observed when you analyze how men behave and react to things
moment by moment, showing their feelings and emotions --
-
being surprised,
-
reacting with anger,
-
being pleased or displeased,
-
feeling like talking or feeling like keeping quiet,
-
being in a good mood or bad,
-
getting excited when telling a story,
-
picking a fight,
-
feeling resentful,
-
liking
something,
-
appreciating something,
-
feeling happy about something,
-
walking out on
an exchange,
-
being terrified to commit,
-
being worried about their success,
-
lacking confidence or feeling very confident,
-
getting excited in games,
-
etc.
These observations prove that men equally with women have feelings and react
with emotions all the time.
Living means having emotions and feelings.
Hence it is invalid to say that men have less feelings than women, or that men
are less emotional then women. Instead, we need to think that men express their
feelings and emotions differently than women, and we shall study these
differences.
Emotional
reactions and feeling motivations are a necessary part of all thinking and
acting. It is not possible to act and react in a conversation or interaction
without feelings and motivations being present all the time, at every
instant.
Nevertheless there are differences between men and women as to how
aware or conscious they are of their own feelings and emotions from moment to
moment, or of the emotions of their partner. Women tend to specialize in
becoming aware of feelings and emotions of their partner. They are motivated to
practice more than men in focusing consciously on feelings in gender
relationships. This is because women are motivated to conjoin to the man of
their choice as intimately as possible, while men are motivated to keep their
independence emotionally and in their feeling life.
This
difference in the skill of gender perceptiveness between a man and a woman
creates an active gender dynamic in which the woman is motivated to prod her man
to become more aware of his and her feelings and motivations.
The man tends to
resist this affective prodding and finds it unpleasant and objectionable. This
creates a constant strain on the developing relationship. The woman feels that
the man doesn't want to "commit" and is resisting the process of conjunction
by
wanting to maintain affective independence and some mental distance, thereby keeping the couple in a
state of division and conflict which is not totally satisfying to the woman.
Nevertheless, all men can learn to be motivated to understand and recognize
their feelings and those of their partners. We will examine the methods men can
use to be successful in this fundamental change in their gender character.
Both men and
women can gain understanding of the initial oppositeness between the
sexes--women striving to conjoin, men resisting the process. The analysis of how
men and women talk to each other reveals this dynamic opposition between men and
women, as exemplified in the studies reported in our text by Deborah Tannen--Gender
and Discourse. Analyzing verbal interactions between men and women is a
powerful method for bringing out the differences between how they use talk to
either oppose each other or to gain deeper intimacy and mutual support. Some of
your activities in this course will include observing the talk and interaction
of men and women in real life and on television (see
Instructions for Report 1).
The views of
"Dr. Laura" in her book The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands
presents the point of view that men are in general "simpler creatures" than
women, and that a wife needs to treat her husband in a certain way in order to
keep him happy and well functioning. This is a different model of marriage than
the unity model because it establishes an unequal status between men and women.
This point of view puts less of responsibility on the men to change and more
responsibility on the women to learn to live with it. The wife is told to adjust
to this unequal status rather than to seek equality or unity.
The
individual's threefold self in gender relationships is a joint
product of biology, socialization, culture, and spiritual make up. As children
we acquire the relationship style of our parents, other adults, and the media
(TV, movies, songs, magazines, cartoons, commercials, online gathering places,
social networking). By the time we begin
adolescent or adult relationships, men have been exposed to years of stereotyped
gender behaviors in all three domains of the threefold self:
-
(a)
exploitative feelings and intentions (affective self) towards girls and women, whom
they view as the "opposite" sex
-
(b)
sexist thoughts (cognitive self)
that stereotype women in a negative content
-
(c) injurious or hostile actions and words (sensorimotor
self) against
women
These
affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor patterns of negative gender behavior by
men create an atmosphere of discord and conflict in dating and marriage, even as
the partners strive to love each other and become a functioning and satisfying
unit.
The expression "mental anatomy" at first sounds like a
metaphor about the mind. We are used to hearing about the anatomy of the
physical body. But regarding the mind, it is common for us to imagine
that it either doesn't exist, or if it does exist, it is something gaseous or
transparent, not solid, just as "a spirit" or "departed person," is often
portrayed in literature or television. But we are also familiar with the
portrayal of angels who appear on earth and have visible bodies. But we imagine that after they return to "heaven," they no longer have a
real body for being married. We all have been exposed to the various fantasies
or imaginings that people have about the afterlife, including our own. This is
why it is essential that we stick with the facts and the actual observations.
Swedenborg was the only scientist in history who was allowed by God to be
conscious in his spiritual mind before resuscitation, and therefore he is the
only scientist in the history of the world who can give us factual information
about the spiritual world of the afterlife in eternity. This is looking at the
Swedenborg Reports with the positive bias in science perspective.
It is fascinating to discover what married couples are like
when they reach the heavens in the mental eternity of their afterlife.
Swedenborg's observations of the relationship between husbands and wives in
heaven and hell give us factual information about the future we can have in our
immortality after we are no longer connected to the physical world. People who
find their way into the heavens of their mind, are married, which symbolizes and
reflects their mental unity. Amazingly, when Swedenborg saw a conjugial couple
from a distance, he saw but one person walking or sitting. But when he came
nearer to the couple, they were a husband and wife. The fact that they appear as
one person is an outward representation of their inward mental unity.
From Swedenborg's description of the difference between men
and women, I constructed various visual charts to picture their mental anatomy.
By studying the details pictured in somewhat different way, it might be easier
for you to gain a clearer knowledge and understanding of how men and women
differ in their spiritual or mental anatomy.
Remember:
spiritual =
afterlife of eternity.
So the anatomical difference between the threefold
mind of men and women remains forever to distinguish them from birth to eternity.
This diagram is from an article I wrote on "spiritual
genes in marriage" and is available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow2.html
Quoting from the Swedenborg Reports:
CL 195. X. THAT THIS FORMATION BY THE WIFE IS
EFFECTED BY THE CONJUNCTION OF HER WILL WITH THE INTERNAL WILL OF THE MAN.
That with the man are rational wisdom and moral
wisdom, and that the wife conjoins herself with those things with the man
which pertain to his moral wisdom, has been shown above (nos. 163-65). All
things pertaining to rational wisdom make his understanding, and all things
pertaining to moral wisdom make his will. It is with these latter, being those
which form the man's will, that the wife conjoins herself.
It is the same
whether it be said that the wife conjoins herself or that she conjoins her
will to the man's will; for a wife is born voluntary and hence does what she
does from the will. It is said with the man's internal will because man's will
has its seat in his intellect, and the intellectual of man is the inmost of
woman, according to what was said above (no. 32) and frequently thereafter
respecting the formation of woman from man. Men have also an external will,
but this often partakes of simulation and dissimulation. A wife sees this will
clearly but does not conjoin herself with it except in pretence or playfully.
(CL 195)
CL 222. (13) There is a conjugial atmosphere which
flows in from the Lord through heaven into each and every thing of the
universe, extending even to its lowest forms. We showed above in its own
chapter* that love and wisdom, or to say the same thing, good and truth,
emanate from the Lord. A marriage of these two elements continually emanates
from the Lord, because they are Him, and from Him come all things. Moreover,
whatever emanates from Him fills the universe; for without this, nothing that
came into existence would continue to exist.
[2] There are several atmospheres which emanate
from the Lord. For example, an atmosphere of conservation for conserving the
created universe; an atmosphere of protection for protecting good and truth
against evil and falsity; an atmosphere of reformation and regeneration; an
atmosphere of innocence and peace; an atmosphere of mercy and grace; besides
others. But the universal one of all is a conjugial atmosphere, because it is
at the same time an atmosphere of propagation and is thus the supreme
atmosphere in conserving the created universe by successive generations.
[3] This conjugial atmosphere fills the universe
and pervades it from the firsts to the lasts of it. That this is so is
apparent from observations made above,** where we showed that there are
marriages in heaven, and most perfect marriages in the third or highest
heaven; also, that besides being in human beings, this atmosphere exists in
all members of the animal kingdom on earth, extending even to worms, and
furthermore in all members of the vegetable kingdom, from olive trees and
palms to the smallest grasses.
[4] This atmosphere is more universal than that of
the heat and light which emanate from the sun of our world; and reason can be
convinced of this from the fact that the conjugial atmosphere operates even
when the sun's warmth is absent, such as in winter, and when the sun's light
is absent, such as at night. Especially is this so in the case of human
beings. It continues to operate because it originates from the sun of the
angelic heaven, and that sun produces a constant balance of heat and light,
that is, a constant union of good and truth. For heaven is in a state of
perpetual spring. Variations in goodness and truth in heaven or in its warmth
and light do not result from changes of the sun, as changes on earth do from
variations in the heat and light coming from the sun there; but they occur as
a result of the way recipient vessels receive them. (CL 222)
If we approach the Swedenborg Reports with the
orientation of the positive bias in science, we are assuming for the time being,
that these reports could be correct and genuine. If that is true, then we all
have an amazing life to look forward to after our resuscitation. This life takes
place in our mental organs, the same ones that we have now, as I am writing this
and you are reading it. Eternity is
not something "later" -- it is now.
Our mental organs are contained within our spiritual body. This body is
constructed out of the spiritual substances of the Spiritual Sun in the mental
world of eternity. These spiritual substances are spiritual heat and spiritual
light in infinite variety and diversity. Spiritual heat is nothing else than the
substance of Divine Love in God's Affective Organ. Spiritual light is the
substance of Divine Truth in God's Cognitive Organ. These two substances are
living and immortal. They stream out of God and into the created universe. They
are the building blocks of all things that exist in the two universes, one
mental or spiritual, the other physical or natural. Everything in both worlds is
constructed out of these two substances from the Spiritual Sun.
Now comes Swedenborg into history and science, spanning the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, who wakes up one day at age 57, and suddenly finds himself
conscious and aware in two worlds. One is the natural world, as you and I are;
the other is the mental world of eternity, which does not become conscious to us
until after resuscitation.
What an amazing unique opportunity for science and for humankind!
From age 57 to 84 Swedenborg takes daily notes of
his observations as a dual universe citizen. He was a reputed scientist and he
had a reputation to protect and live up to. His careful daily notes are
published today in many languages, and the collection in English comes to about
30 volumes. Today they are
available online with search engines. They are considered "religious books"
by most people (as you can see by googling Swedenborg), but in theistic
psychology they are considered scientific psychological reports of the
levels of the human
mind and its anatomy.
Now with all this in mind, let us see how the
following paragraph applies to us and to the unity model of marriage that we are
studying in. Quoting again (as above):
CL 222. (13) There is a conjugial atmosphere which
flows in from the Lord through heaven into each and every thing of the
universe, extending even to its lowest forms. We showed above in its own
chapter* that love and wisdom, or to say the same thing, good and truth,
emanate from the Lord. A marriage of these two elements continually emanates
from the Lord, because they are Him, and from Him come all things. Moreover,
whatever emanates from Him fills the universe; for without this, nothing that
came into existence would continue to exist.
This says that a "conjugial atmosphere" flows out
from God through the Spiritual Sun into the human mind, the mind of animals,
and even the atomic particles of cells. This conjugial sphere is the result
of the substance of good (or love, spiritual heat) conjoining with the
substance of truth (or intelligence, rationality, spiritual light). Life and
existence of things are the result of this conjunction, called the spiritual
marriage. You can see how this
forms the anatomical basis for the unity of husband and wife conjoining in
conjugial love or eternal marriage.
The mental organs (in our spiritual body) are actual
permanent physiological structures, made of substances and elements from the
Spiritual Sun. So the word
"conjoining" and "unity" have an organic anatomical meaning.
The woman's affective organ conjoins itself by love
to the man's cognitive organ. The man's affective organ conjoins itself to the
woman's cognitive organ. This creates a new human mind called the "conjoint
self." Her love (A) activates his thinking (C), and his love (A) activates her
thinking (C).
In other words: She loves (A) his masculine
intelligence (C), and he loves (A) her feminine intelligence (C).
Or: His masculine thinking (C) is guided and managed
by her feminine loves (A), and her feminine thinking (C) is managed and guided
by his masculine loves (A).
You can see that the conjoint self is a new human
being, the result of soul mates conjoining into one.
The
conjoint self is the final phase of human evolution.
The unity model of marriage is a practical approach
for couples in this life to prepare themselves for eternal conjunction in
eternity -- which is not far away from you right now! We each have only a few
years to accomplish this preparation. Swedenborg reports that many people he
observed and interviewed after their resuscitation, were unprepared for
conjugial conjunction with a soul mate. Instead, they were prepared and ready to
experience and explore a continuing free and endless life of sex with many
partners.
Unfortunately for these people, the sex does not
last very long, since it non-exclusive sex with many partners has a biological
built-in end point in anatomical impotence for men. Later they start loathing
sex and everything that is feminine or related to exclusivity, fidelity and
marriage. I say "unfortunately." Indeed, what a colossal tragedy it is for many
men to fantasize that they can have limitless sex with many partners. The
Swedenborg Reports prove otherwise. So it is critical that men prepare
themselves mentally for life as an anatomical conjoint self.
The man has to learn to get used to the idea that
exclusive sex with his wife soul mate in an eternal marriage, is the very basis
of heaven in eternity.
Conjugial love is a Divine atmosphere that emanates
from the Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity, and enters our mental
organs in the spiritual body, which is born into eternity, along with our
physical body, which is born into time. This temporary body is an exact copy of
the spiritual body, but it is made of substances from the physical sun, while
the spiritual body is made of substances from the Spiritual Sun.
Love is what prepares us for all life, in the
natural world and in the world of eternity. Such as our love is, such is our
thinking, and consequently, such is doing and interacting. If the man adopts a
lower love (layer 9A, concrete corporeal mentality), his thinking will be male
dominant over women, and consequently, his actions towards her will be
authoritarian and coercive. The atmosphere of their relationship is contrary or
opposed to heaven. They cannot form a conjoint self as long as he thinks that
women are inferior to men, or that they have less rights than men.
If the man adopts a somewhat higher love (layer 8A,
abstract materialism), his thinking will be equity with a focus on
egalitarianism, and consequently, his actions towards her will be contentious
and competitive. He will want to me right all the time, or most of the time,
driving her mad with frustration and despair. She keeps hoping he will "get it"
and stop opposing her, being himself, independent and resisting her influence on
him. She has to negotiate for every
little decent treatment he owes her anyway, but reneges on.
When
this man is resuscitated, will he be prepared to live in a heavenly
conjugial society with his soul mate? The answer is No. After resuscitation he
will be unwilling to give up his cherished loves in relationship --
the love to remain independent
the love to resist a woman's directions and pressures
the love to retain and nurture negative feelings towards the woman he is
with
the love of feeling free of close relationship obligations
the love to consider women as inferior
the love of sensorimotor intimacy without affective intimacy
the love of being right and of controlling the woman
the love of being internally immune to his
woman's pleadings
etc.
These are loves sourced in the Grand Monster, and they are opposite to the
loves sourced in the Grand Human. The following are the kinds of loves a man
needs to learn to acquire, love, and live by:
the love to form a conjoint self
the love to give up independence for the sake of interdependence
the love of making his woman totally happy from himself
the love of avoiding anything disturbing or unpleasant around his woman
the love of giving in to his woman
the love of his woman's feminine intelligence
the love of affective and cognitive in intimacy within their sensorimotor
intimacy
etc .
All this shows you that men need help in preparing themselves for a new
physiological mental life where they have new relational and interdependence
loves, which now they hate because they threaten their independence and
conveniences.
The unity model of marriage helps men to be more
effective in their preparation. Women who are aware of the unity model of
marriage, and realize that it is true, will have a distinct advantage in knowing
how to help their man to carry through with the unity model mentality of layer 7
(the rational mind). This will not only raise the man's consciousness in
relationship skills, but will also raise the man's consciousness in all areas of
life -- parenting, family, work, community, citizenship, etc. The rational man
who thinks in layer 7 is peaceful, intelligent, obedient, and well motivated to
all that is good and true. The rational man honors women, femininity, and
gallantry. The rational man loves
feminine intelligence more than masculine intelligence.
To summarize the mental anatomy of a man and
woman:
A woman does things from wisdom (C) by means of love
(A).
A man does things from love (A) by means of wisdom
(C).
In other words, a woman does
things from her cognitive organ (C) by means of her affective organ (A). A man does
things from his affective organ (A) by means of his cognitive organ (C).
The following diagram is from an article on "The
Spiritual Psychobiology of Marriage" and is available here:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/leonpsy/instructor/gloss/dow1.html#biology
The diagram
immediately above shows the two phases or stages of marriage. Initially (phase
1), the
man's consciousness of externalizing truth, which is what he thinks
about and knows (cognitive, C),
conjoins itself with the wife's externalizing good, which is the complex
of the loves she has (A). And reciprocally, the wife's
externalizing loves and affections (A) conjoin with the husband's externalizing cognitions
(C).
Thus they form an externalizing marriage or social and moral bond (natural
marriage). In phase 1 of marriage and close relationships the man presents the
external front and leadership and is on the outside facing the world, while the
woman is on the inside creating a permanent relationship and bond between them,
thus a "home" as it were.
In
traditional
marriages
following the male dominance model, this
relative position of man and woman
is
enacted
literally,
so
that
the
woman
stays home and is the "homemaker," while the
man leaves the home to earn a living for the family. In modern marriages
following the equity model, wives and mothers may also have work or career
outside the home. But psychologically, biologically, and spiritually the woman
in a couple partnership occupies an inner position relative to the man, who is
on the outside. A man's consciousness faces outward to the world while a woman's
consciousness faces inward toward the bonding of the relationship and the
achievement of mental intimacy or unity.
The woman
works towards unity from her "external good" which is "within" or
"above" the man's "external truth." What is within or above in terms of
spiritual positioning is also higher, more refined, more concerned with
celestial things like love, harmony, unity, growth, peace, beauty,
sensuality, warmth.
The man's
outward or external spiritual positioning is lower, rougher, grosser,
more concerned with spiritual things like truth, knowledge,
rationality, doctrine, precepts, principles, applications.
Phase 1 in marriage and relationships is
called
externalizing because
the man's cognitive focus (C, achieving) and the wife's affective focus (A,
bonding) are both in the externalizing or lower
degrees of their consciousness (natural marriage). However, if the two partners continue to grow
together and conjoin more deeply within, then they enter phase 2 which is an
internalizing union or conjunction (spiritual marriage). Now their internalizing parts are conjoined or
united--the man's internalizing good and the woman's internalizing truth. Now
for the first time the man becomes fully a husband and the woman fully a wife.
The unity model specifies the mental anatomy
of marriage. In the negative bias approach to the psychology of marriage only
phase 1 is recognized. Couples are expected to grow more interdependent and
close as the decades of marriage proceed. This is certainly valid. Phase 1
undergoes growth and development so that the partners feel closer and closer,
when the marriage is a success and lasts. But the unity model introduces a new
dimension to the relationship based on mental anatomy not physical anatomy or
psychological definitions of closeness. In other words every man and woman is
born with a temporary physical body on earth, and a permanent spiritual body in
the mental world of eternity, as discussed above. The process
of bonding and becoming interdependent does not occur in the physical body or
with the physical body.
The process of becoming
a couple is a mental event, and must have an organic basis in the spiritual body
where are located our mental organs: affective (feelings), cognitive (thinking)
and sensorimotor (sensations and movements).
Bonding is an activity of our feelings,
loves, intentions, desires, fears, anxieties, enjoyments -- these are all mental
experiences we have as a result of the operations going on in our affective
organ in the spiritual body in the mental world of eternity. We are conscious of
these experiences because they are going on in the portion of the spiritual body
called the natural mind. So the diagrams in this section attempt to
portray the organic relationship between man and woman in the process of
bonding, both in phase 1 (natural marriage), and in phase 2 (spiritual
marriage).
You can see that the anatomical nature of
bonding is totally different in the natural marriage phase (1) and in the
spiritual marriage phase (2). Couples cannot attain to the beginning of phase 2
by going further and further with phase 1. The two phases are
discontinuous and one cannot go from one to the other. They are in "discrete
degrees" and relate to each other by correspondence (not by continuity). Phase 1
bonding activity in the mind of the partners is an operation going on in the
external region of the spiritual body. For instance if you have a pimple on the
face it is an external activity (skin) of the physical body. But if you have a
cold sore on the lip it is an internal activity (virus) of the physical body.
Phase 1 bonding is external, phase 2 bonding is internal.
Phase 1 bonding in external marriages and
relationships conjoins the man's external mental focus (cognitive, C) the
woman's external mental focus (affective, A). A man's consciousness focus as he
grows up and becomes an adult is centered in his cognitive organ (C), while a
woman's consciousness as she grows up and becomes and adult is centered in her
affective organ (A). When man and woman get together to form a couple or
romantic partnership they are each focused on reciprocal zones
of their cumulative interactions. The
man is focused on this thoughts about himself with her, while the woman is
focused on her feelings and intentions about him. Phase 1 bonding takes place
when her feelings are conjoined to his thoughts.
If she does not like his thoughts she cannot
bond to him. A woman bonds to a man romantically when she likes his thoughts and
his way of reasoning and presenting himself and things. If she does not approve
of his thoughts, or feels repelled by his attitudes, she cannot bond with him
romantically.
A man will allow the woman to bond to him when he recognizes that she
likes his thoughts.
Note that in phase 1 bonding the woman takes
the lead. The man does not bond because bonding is an affective focus on the
relationship and men have a cognitive focus on the relationship. So when the
woman takes the lead in phase 1 bonding (external) by loving the man's thoughts,
he can respond and react by allowing it in his mind or rejecting it in his mind.
In general, if he sees that she likes his thoughts, he will feel attracted to
her, and this is the acceptance of her bonding to him. In this way they achieve
mutual bonding when the man man responds positively to the woman. Anatomically
this is all happening in the external portion of their spiritual body.
After
phase 1 bonding is achieved and is working for both partners, there is the
opportunity of starting phase 2 bonding, which is an inward anatomical
conjunction or interdependence of their spiritual bodies. Here everything is
reversed. The woman cannot take the lead. She eventually comes to realize this
after trying desperately to achieve affective intimacy which the man
continuously and successfully resists. She then understands that this deeper
intimacy she craves for has to come from him. The man has to take the lead in
phase 2.
Note the anatomical details of this
spiritual bonding process (phase 2, diagram above). The wife is shown outside
and the man inside -- the opposite of phase 1. In phase 2 bonding the spiritual
bodies are facing the mental world of eternity, not the physical world of time
and space. In the mental world of eternity what is within determines what is on
the outside. In phase 1 the wife is inside and the husband outside, hence the
wife takes the lead. In phase 2, the husband is within and the wife is outside,
hence the husband takes the lead. If the woman fails to take the lead in phase
1, there will be no external bonding -- they are a couple only in name.
Similarly, If the man fails to take the lead in phase 2, there will be no
internal bonding -- they are a couple only in the natural marriage sense, that
is, without affective intimacy (spiritual marriage).
The woman takes the lead for external
bonding (natural marriage), while the man takes the lead for internal bonding
(spiritual marriage). External bonding involves external cognitive
operations (man) conjoined to external affective operations (woman). Internal
bonding involves internal cognitive operations (woman) conjoined to internal
affective operations (man). To understand this you need to know
the difference between external mental operations (A and C) and internal mental
operations (A and C).
External affective operations (A) is feminine and contrast with internal
affective operations (A) which is masculine. External cognitive operations (C)
is masculine and contrasts with internal cognitive operations (C) which is
feminine. In other words, the mental organs of women in the spiritual body is
arranged with the cognitive organ inside the affective organ, while for men, the
cognitive organ is outside the affective organ, which is within. In still other
words, women act from inner truth through outer love, while men act from inner
love through outer truth. Masculine truth is outward, feminine truth is inward.
Masculine love is inward, feminine love is outward. What is inward commands what
is outward, hence men's way of thinking is adapted for the external life, while
women's way of thinking is adapted for the internal life.
In the afterlife of eternity where the couple will be rejoined, the woman's
thoughts and wisdom (C) define the couple's external life (S), while the man's
loves and virtues (A) define the couple's internal life. In this life, the man's
thoughts and intelligence (C) define the couple's external life, while the
woman's loves and virtues (A) define the couple's internal life.
Our
external life refers to our focus on the daily issues and activities a
couple is immersed in -- living together, adapting to each other's social and
physical habits and styles, coping with social and financial demands, caring for
children, relationship to parents, community service, entertainment, sports,
eating together, sexual activity. Our internal life refers to our focus
on mental intimacy and affective support and bonding -- being best friends and
soul mates, looking out for what is best for the other, full confidence and
trust, reliance and acceptance, being together forever.
To be fulfilled and to have access to the full benefit of marriage
bonding, it is necessary that the partners conjoin both their external (phase 1)
and their internal life (phase 2).
In the diagram
below, the same process is portrayed.
The externalizing union in stage 1 is
shown to bond the man's externalizing truth (C) to the wife's externalizing good
(A).
This is not so much a true union as a partnership since it resides in
externalizing (or lower) parts of the consciousness. Husband and wife as
partners are adjoined to each other by externalizing natural life and family,
but they are not yet conjoined from within by inner or spiritual life, which
refers to inmost intimacy and eternal friendship. But in
stage 2, the husband's internalizing good (A) is conjoined to the wife's
internalizing truth (C). Now the marriage bond consists of his affections (A) covered over
with her truths (C). This is a true conjunction or union because it resides in the
higher or internalizing regions of their consciousness and life. Only when this
stage of internal conjunction is achieved can they be prepared into a
heavenly marriage and live together in eternity.
Couples who do
not progress to an internal union of minds or spirits (stage 2, spiritual
marriage), remain separated in their
internals, and when they meet again in the other life, they live with one
another again for a brief period. They then can become aware of each other's
internal character and disposition, and these separate them. Each then looks for
another partner with whom they can enter into an internal marriage in heaven.
But this happens only when both have been regenerated while still in the
physical body.
To be regenerated means to learn to give up inherited hellish
traits and to acquire heavenly traits in one's threefold self.
When they meet in the other life and live
together again briefly, they
may decide
that they are unsuitable for each other by internal disposition, in which case they separate.
The one who is regenerate in character goes to heaven with the newly found conjugial partner
or soul mate, while the other who is not regenerated goes to hell where they
enter into a series of relationships, which are called infernal concubinage.
These infernal marriages are purely externalizing and both partners are "devils"
who hate each other's guts yet are forced to endure each other in a marriage
made in hell.
Quoting from Swedenborg's Conjugial Love:
CL 32. (ii) A male is then male and a female is female.
Since a person lives on after death, and a person may be male or female, and
the male and the female are so different that one cannot change into the
other, it follows that after death a male lives on as a male and a female as a
female, each of them being spiritual. We say that the male cannot change into
the female, nor the female into the male, so that in consequence after death a
male is a male and a female is a female, but because it is not known in
what masculinity and femininity essentially consist, I must state this briefly
here.
The essential difference is that the inmost core of the male is love,
and its envelope is wisdom, or what is the same thing, it is love enveloped in
wisdom. The inmost core of the female is the wisdom of the male,
and its envelope is the love from it. But this is a feminine love,
which God gives a wife by means of her husband's wisdom. The other love is a
masculine love, a love of being wise, given by God to the husband to the
extent that he acquires wisdom.
Thus it is that the male is the wisdom of love and the female the
love of that wisdom.
There is therefore implanted in each from creation a love of being
joined into one. (CL 32)
CL 33. The result of being so formed in the beginning is that the male is
by birth a creature of the intellect, the female a creature of the will, or to
put the same thing another way, the male acquires from birth an affection for
knowing, understanding and being wise, and the female acquires from birth a
love of joining herself with that affection in the male.
Since what is within forms the outside so as to resemble itself, and
the form of the male is that of the intellect, and the form of the female is
that of love for it, this is why the male differs from the female in face,
voice, and the rest of the body. He has a sterner face, a rougher voice and a
stronger body, not to mention a bearded chin, so generally speaking a less
beautiful form than the female.
There are also differences in their gestures and behaviour. In short,
they have no similarity, and yet every detail has the impulse towards
union. In fact, there is masculinity in every part of the male,
down to the smallest part of his body, and also in every idea he thinks of and
every spark of affection he feels; and the same is true of the femininity of
the female. Since therefore one cannot change into the other, it follows that
after death the male is male and the female is female. (CL 33)
CL 88. (iii) There is the truth of good, and from this the good of truth,
that is to say, truth coming from good and good from that truth; both of them
have a tendency implanted from creation to join themselves into one.
Some idea of the distinction between these two must be gained, because
knowledge of the essential source of conjugial love depends upon it. For the
truth of good, that is, truth from good, is, as will be shown in what follows
[90, 91], male; and the good of truth, that is, the good from that truth, is
female. But the distinction can be better grasped, if love is substituted for
good and wisdom for truth. These are one and the same (see 84 above). The only
way wisdom can come into existence for a person is by means of the love of
being wise. If this love is taken away, there is no way the person can be
wise. It is wisdom arising from this love which is meant by the truth of good,
or truth coming from good. But when a person has as a result of that love
acquired wisdom, and loves wisdom in himself, that is, loves himself for his
wisdom, then he forms a love, which is the love of wisdom and is meant by the
good of truth, or good coming from that truth.
[2] A man therefore possesses two loves. One, which comes first, is the love
of being wise, and the other, which comes later, is the love of wisdom. But if
this second love remains with a man, it is a wicked love, called pride in or
love of one's own intelligence. It will be proved in the following pages that
it has been provided from creation that, to prevent this love being his ruin,
it was taken from the man and copied into the woman, so becoming conjugial
love which makes him whole again. Some remarks about these two loves and the
copying of the latter one into the woman may be seen in 32, 33 above, and in
the Preliminaries, 20. If therefore we understand for love "good" and for
wisdom "truth," then it is proved by what has been said that there is truth of good,
that is, truth coming from good, and from this the good of truth, that is, good
coming from that truth. (CL 88)
Note this sentence in the quote above from CL 88: "the truth of good, that
is, truth from good, is male; and the good of truth, that is, the good from that
truth, is female." Here is a diagram that attempts to portray what the passages above describe:
Starting at the bottom you can see that literature written by women is different
from that of men, or that women managers do things in a feminine way, which
is different from the masculine way. The question of "Which is better or more
effective" needs to be answered by presenting evidence showing that women who
have been traditionally excluded from certain activities or jobs, have been
working at these now for several workforce generations, and some women outscore
men, while the overall average and range are also very similar.
This proves that
men and women can perform equally effectively in any job setting or team work.
But it leaves open the question of how these jobs or activities are performed by
men and by women. The diagram above indicates what the differences are in the
way women and men perform the same activities. This difference is not due to
their intelligence, but to their mental anatomy. For instance, men and women eat
the same foods, but their bodies assimilate the nutrients from them differently
due to hormonal and biochemical differences relating to physical anatomy or
physiology.
Now you need to practice applying the diagram to the differences you can observe
between men and women. Women are most comfortable being themselves according to
their mental anatomy. This is how they define intimacy with a man in marriage or
in an exclusive relationship. When the woman feels that she can be her feminine
self in the relationship she feels maximum freedom, and thence total intimacy
with the man.
She feels happy and alive when this happens. Everything she then
does is from her feminine self. This is portrayed in the diagram above. If a
woman competes with another woman or a man, she does it from her wisdom by means
of her love. Her wisdom is inmost, while her love is outmost. What is inmost is
less clearly in awareness compared to what is outmost. So when a woman acts she
is less aware of her wisdom in the act, and more aware of her love in the act. A
man is the reciprocal of this. When a man acts he is less aware of of his love
in the act, and more aware of his wisdom in the act. In order to understand this
you need to call upon what you already know about men and women -- which is
considerable.
EXERCISE 2.1.1:
Read this Section once over then again as you think about your parents. Jot down or type out
thoughts that come to you as you consider these questions.
(a) Your father as a representative of man, and your mother as a representative
of woman. How were they different as you grew up? How did you experience them
distinctly? What was a normal or regular mood or emotional quality that you
experienced when being with one of them, or the other, or with both together?
What similar or different thoughts or emotions did you have when something
happened and you had to deal in turn with your father and your mother?
(b) Now look at your notes. You might want to expand on some issues. Summarize
what you discovered in relation to how a man thinks and feels and how a woman
thinks and feels. Relate this to the mental anatomy of a man and a woman.
(c) Now apply this approach to other men and women you know -- siblings,
friends, neighbors, teachers, motorists, co-workers, supervisors. Does this
approach help you to understand better what people do?
(d) Now discuss your findings and new perspective with friends, parents, or
class teams. Come to class prepared to discuss some of these issues.
The anatomy of the human mind contains a higher spiritual mind that we use in
our afterlife of eternity and a lower natural mind that we use in this life. The
conjugial heavens in eternity are the thoughts and feelings we have in the
spiritual mind. The conscious life we have in this life is through the thoughts
and feelings in our natural mind. At death the natural mind becomes unconscious
while we awaken fully conscious in the spiritual mind. This anatomy has been
described by Swedenborg through his observations of the afterlife in his
spiritual mind. At age 57 he suddenly developed the capacity to be conscious in
his spiritual mind as well as in his natural mind. He was thus able to describe
in his reports the empirical details of resuscitation and conjugial love. We are
taking on the positive bias in science so that we can examine and assess what he
has presented. If we remain in the usual negative bias in science we would be
unable to examine and assess his reports without rejecting them right from the
start as being impossible. The positive bias allows us to examine the reports
objectively and to do so at their face value. Swedenborg was a well known
scientist and public figure in Sweden and he had the respect of everyone as a
genius and honest impeccable scientist.
The mental anatomy that we are considering in the previous diagrams clearly
indicate that the intelligence of men cannot be the same as the intelligence of
women inasmuch as they are anatomically reciprocals of each other. In the male
dominance mentality men are more intelligent than women. In the equity mentality
men and women are equally intelligent. In the unity model men and women have
different intelligences that must fit together. By fitting together as
reciprocals they are able to greatly enhance each other's thinking and
understanding.
In other words the world is greatly enriched in intelligence because there
are men and women in the equation. Each gender contributes a unique type of
thinking and understanding. According to the mental anatomy diagrams above, men
act (S) from love (A) by means of intelligence (C), while women act (S) from
intelligence (C) by means of love.
Another way of saying it is this:
Men act (S) from love (A) through intelligence (C).
Women act (S) from intelligence through love (A).
Still another way of saying the same anatomical fact:
Men act (S) from feelings (A) through thoughts (C).
Women act (S) from thoughts (C) through feelings (A).
Diagrammatically:
Men:
Am -----> Cm -----> Sm
Women: Cw
-----> Aw -----> Sw
As is plainly visible, the threefold self of men and women is created by
anatomical differences in the way their mental organs function in action (S),
thought (C), and feeling (A). Remember that what is first in the sequence is
also higher and more interior. So a man's highest and inmost organ is the
affective (A) while a woman's inmost organ is the cognitive (C). Note that for
men intelligence (C) is in the intermediate position while women's intelligence
(C) is in the first position. Since first is always higher it follows that
women's intelligence (Cw) is higher than man's intelligence (Cm).
This is the basis for the unity model of marriage.
Higher or interior intelligence is more spiritual, while lower or external
intelligence is natural. Hence women's intelligence is more suited and
adapted for spiritual or interior things, while man's intelligence is more
suited and adapted for natural or external things.
Experience in this world demonstrated that a woman's intelligence gives her the
capacity to function and achieve as much as a man through his male intelligence.
Women can do the same jobs as men and perform within similar ranges. But
because women can do this with their feminine intelligence does not mean that
the female intelligence is the same as the male intelligence.
When
it comes to achieving a spiritual marriage woman's intelligence provides a big
advantage over masculine intelligence. Spiritual marriages are based on the
unity model. This phase becomes actual when man's intelligence conjoins with
woman's intelligence.
Note again:
Men:
AIM -----> CEM -----> SM
Women: CIF
-----> AEF -----> SF
Conjoint self: AIMCIF -----> CEMAEF
-----> SMSF
IM = internal male
IF = internal female
EM = external male
EF= external female
Note that the unity couple's conjoint self is constructed anatomically by
joining together man's interior or higher feelings (AIM) with woman's
interior or higher thoughts (CIF) yielding this: (AIMCIF),
and man's lower or external thoughts (CEM) with woman's lower or
external feelings (AEF) yielding this: (CEMAEF).
As you can see from the anatomical diagram natural
marriage (phase 1) consists of conjoining woman's lower or external good (A)
with man's lower or external truth (CEMAEF). Phase 2 (spiritual
marriage) consists of conjoining man's inmost or higher good (A) to woman's
interior or higher thoughts (AIMCIF).
Note from the diagram that in natural marriages (phase 1) the
woman is within (A) while the man is outside (C) relative to each other.
Anatomically, the natural marriage is the conjunction between the woman's
affective organ (A) in the external mind and the man's cognitive organ (C) in
the external mind. The affective organ supplies the operations of the will, of
intentions, of motives, of goal achievement. The cognitive organ supplies the
operations of the understanding, of planning, interpreting.
So in this external conjunction of the partners
(phase 1, natural marriages), the woman is the source of the couple's intentions
and motives (A) towards the world, while the man is the source of the couple's
interpretations of the world and their planning strategies (C).
Note that external or natural female affections (A) are used
for the couple's intentions, motives, values, feelings (A) while external or
natural male intelligence (C) is used for the couple's dealings with the world
-- interpreting what is going on on the outside and planning strategies to deal
with it (C). Hence it is that the man takes the lead in dealing with the outside
world where the couple must survive and adapt, while the woman takes the lead in
dealing with the inside world of the marriage and the family. This has applied
to all couple relationships in the past, which is why men run things in the
world while women run things in the home. This is still true today with modern
couples (equity model) that have working wives and mothers. The men are supposed
to help out with domestic chores to ease the load on the working wives and moms.
But society still attributes to the woman the central responsibility for running
the home (cooking. laundry, toddlers) and making sure everything is being taken
care of.
In natural marriages the
external or materialistic thoughts (CEM) of the man are conjoined to the
external materialistic feelings (AEF) of the woman. In spiritual
marriages (unity model) the interior or spiritual feelings of the man (AIM) are conjoined
to the interior or spiritual thoughts of the woman (CIM).
Natural marriages are involved in the male dominance model
and in the equity model. Spiritual marriages are involved in the unity model.
Natural marriage (phase 1, dominance and equity models) is called an
external conjunction of man and woman because it involves the
conjunction of the two people's external minds. Spiritual marriage (phase
2, unity model) is called an internal conjunction of man and woman
because it involves the conjunction of the two people's internal minds.
Every person is born with a natural mind and a spiritual
mind. Both are housed in the spiritual body which is born in eternity and
connected by correspondence with the physical body which is born in the natural
world of matter, time and place. This is why we are called dual citizens.
We are citizens of the physical world of time through our temporary physical
body, which functions in correspondence with our natural mind. And through our
immortal spiritual body, we are also citizens of the spiritual world of the
afterlife, also called the mental world of eternity.
Until death of the physical body we are conscious in our
natural mind and unconscious in our spiritual mind. After resuscitation from
death (a few hours later), we are conscious in our spiritual mind and
unconscious in our natural mind. We continue our life of immortality in eternity
through our spiritual mind which is housed in our spiritual body.
Spiritual marriage (phase 2) involves the conjunction of the
man's interior or spiritual mind with the interior or spiritual mind of the
woman. This is why spiritual marriages are permanent and eternal.
Note carefully:
Since spiritual marriage is an internal conjunction of the their
spiritual body and spiritual mind it cannot be seen in the physical world.
Natural marriage is an external conjunction of their physical body and
interactions, it can be seen, measured, and recorded. Natural marriage has a
worldly and legal basis in the physical world, while spiritual marriage becomes
visible and recordable in the world of eternity.
Nevertheless, when the couple is involved in a spiritual
marriage, as in the unity model, their natural marriage reflects this. For
instance, in a spiritual marriage the couple's natural marriage is in
correspondence with it so that it may be called a heavenly marriage or a 'match
made in heaven' between soul mates. The unity model leads to such a spiritual
marriage.
The husband who wants to be a unity husband has to learn to accept and love the
following principles of good behavior towards his wife:
1. Not to express disagreement through the sensorimotor self (head , face,
hands, stance, voice, touch, speech acts). Wanting to learn from the wife what she sees and
experiences about his sensorimotor expressions when he interacts with her under
various situations or issues.
2. Not to express disagreement in verbal exchanges that are experienced by
the wife as disjunctive. Wanting to learn from the wife what she experiences as
disjunctive and unsexy conversational style.
3. Not to perform acts of disloyalty to her. Not to betray her to others by
revealing things she does not want them to know. Not to discuss her with anyone
in a way she would object if she heard a recording of the conversation. Not to
lie to her in order to protect himself from her disapproval. Not to ignore what
she says, but to think about it and remember it, and make it important to him.
4. To be supportive of her by encouraging her in what she wants to do or
accomplish. To want to strengthen her self-confidence and thus, not to do or say
anything that would weaken it or hurt it. To listen to her, to understand her,
to learn from her, to admire her thinking, to appreciate her humor, to love her
observations and perspective on various things.
5. To be protective of her sense of security and her vulnerabilities.
To love her femininity. To be soft and sweet with her, always. To avoid giving
her worries. To relieve her stress and anxieties.
6. To be useful to her in various ways that make her life more comfortable.
To learn to offer to do things for her, then to learn to do them in a way she
approves and likes.
7. To touch her every time he sees her. To keep himself clean, shaven, and
attired in clean, attractive clothes. To learn how she likes to be touched and
aroused. To pay attention to details. To learn how to make her laugh, and what
puts her in a good mood. To be be dedicated to her happiness.
8. To learn how she wants him to make up when he precipitated a state of
disjunction between them, by violating good principles of action. To learn how
to perform procedures of (a) sufficient apology, (b) felt remorse, and (c) fun
ideas about restitution or compensation (e.g., surprises that delight her).
These same principles of good behavior apply to all couples, married or not,
who are in a romantic and exclusive long term relationship that they think of as
forever or eternal.
Husbands can be committed to these 'good behavior' principles only when they
experience an attraction to the unity model of marriage. To feel this
attraction they must have a liking for the spiritual ideas of eternity and
femininity. Love attracts. The husband has to love the idea in his mind that he
is going to be attached to this woman more and more to endless eternity. He has
to find this idea attractive in his mind. To be attached to this one woman
forever. He has to love that idea more than any other idea he can think
of. When a man brings himself into this mental state, he can learn to love these
'good behavior' principles, and begins to practice them in his daily
interactions.
Once a man is committed to this daily practice of being a unity marriage
husband, his mental state changes day by day, progressively into the "heavenly
order." This is an expression used in the Swedenborg Reports where it is
described according to what Swedenborg observed during his interviews and visits
with couples after resuscitation who inhabited their heavenly layers in the
mental world of eternity. The heavenly order of the mind is arranged in a
top-down hierarchy of loves or feelings of a certain kind or quality. At the
very top of the hierarchy of loves is what the Swedenborg Reports call
"conjugial love." The word's usual spelling "conjugal" refers to natural
marriage in the socio-legal sense, but when spelled "conjugial" it refers to
spiritual marriage.
Spiritual marriage begins when both partners understand and realize that
their union is permanent to eternity. Spiritual marriage evolves from that
beginning and progresses closer and closer to the heavenly order. This means
that the husband has endorsed and committed himself to the principles of good
behavior needed to build the unity model marriage. In a "conjugial marriage" the
affective hierarchy of both husband and wife are arranged so that the highest
love each one has is the love for each other. He is her heart and circulatory
system, while she is her lungs or respiratory system. He supplies their conjoint
blood -- that is, their loves and affections, and she supplies their conjoint
breath -- that is, their thoughts and wisdom. Conjugial husband and wife
function as one unit -- the conjoint self.
Husbands who are practicing the unity model of marriage can experience the
conjoint self more and more distinctly as they progress more deeply into the
conjugial relationship. The conjoint self is the heavenly order in marriage. We
work towards that state by aligning our affections and loves so that they
represent the heavenly order. In the husband's mind the wife has to occupy top
position or first place. This is conjugial love. All things must be subordinated
to the one ruling love, which is the love they each have for the other. By
committing himself the the good behavior principles, the husband taps into the
source of inner mental power capable of overcoming his natural and intense
personal and masculine feelings and needs to be woman dominant. This higher
inner mental power is available to any husband or boyfriend, merely by
committing himself to practicing the good behavior principles because he wants
to achieve the heavenly order of conjugial love through the conjoint self.
This higher or inner mental power is able to overcome the natural hereditary
biological masculine resistance for affective intimacy with a woman. Man wants
to retain his affective independence. He
wants to love what he likes, he
wants to think what he likes, he wants to act the way he likes. This is what he now
has to give up so that he
will want to love what she likes, he
will want to
think what is agreeable to her, he
will want to act the way she likes. To make this switch in mental state the
man must have the inner power to accomplish it, through overcoming his own
powerful resistance towards giving up affective independence. He now has to like
what she likes more than he likes what he likes. Being committed to
practicing the good behavior principles gives him access to this inner power,
which is the heavenly power.
Everything gets better and better in the heavenly order of marriage.
It is well known that natural marriage tends to wane and diminish in romance
and passion, though commitment to making the marriage last may increase. Often
couples who have been married for decades have never become best friends to each
other. They share loyalties and habits, but not feelings of peace and unity that
come from not tolerating disagreements with each other. When the heavenly order
of marriage is entered, its progression is experienced by both partners every
day more and more as they live their life together. There is no waning of love,
romance, and passion, but a progressive increase of it, and a deepening of it,
so that the entire mental state is affected in many layers, all arranged in the
heavenly order, which is infinite in variety, quality, beauty, and wisdom. The
Swedenborg Reports describe many aspects of this heavenly order which is called
"the marriage of good and truth." This eternal and Divine marriage in God is the
source of conjugial love between husband and wife in a spiritual marriage.
We will now study various details about the three models --
male dominance model, equity model, and unity model.
This conclusion follows from the mental anatomy of heaven in
eternity. It makes sense rationally from the perspective of the positive bias in
science. God reveals in Sacred Scripture that His purpose for creating
individual human beings is so that He can bring two of them together, made for
each other, built mentally to fit and to attain the true higher experience of
life in heaven in eternity. The unity of a man and a woman into a conjugial
couple in heaven -- this is the purpose of the universe, according to God's own
revelation to humankind. The man who realizes this idea is no longer capable
of thinking badly about the woman he loves, and for her sake, he can no longer
think badly of any woman.
Because of the intensity with which the negative bias is
instilled in the thinking of educated people, few educated people know today
that an individual is not a full human being, but only has the capacity to
become one. A man is created to achieve unity with a woman, and a woman is
created to achieve unity with a man. Women are more aware of this regardless of
their education, which they put around themselves like a cape but do not let
enter into their spiritual self. Men are more vulnerable to education, shaping
their inner thinking according to its dictates and doctrines. They ingest the
negative bias in science more deeply into their reasoning process.
Women retain a distinct rational perception of conjunction,
external and internal. They sense strongly that the external conjunction ("I
love you." ... "I love you too.") is not the final type of conjunction they
crave for to become truly free, truly themselves as they were created feminine
by God. Men do not sense this -- until they become spiritually enlightened and
are able to examine the positive bias perspective regarding eternal spiritual
marriages. Once a man is enlightened he can begin the long journey backwards in
his mind, a journey in which he left around all sorts of gross thoughts and
inclinations towards a woman, and women in general. This is a long and arduous
task for most men, but many are able to stick to it and acquire a new chivalrous
or gallant
character that respects women as their highest principle in life and the
universe. In this way they become real men, real to their creation, which is,
that they unite themselves with a woman and live in conjugial happiness to
eternity. This is why God created them.
The key to this amazing victory and achievement is to start
practicing the self-witnessing life. This means monitoring what your mental
organs are doing: your feelings (A), thoughts (C), and sensations and actions
(S).
With this objective data on what you actually are all day
every day, you have what you need to change yourself. I have done this for
many years and it has allowed me to reform my socialization habits of thinking
negative thoughts about others all the time. I no longer do this. It is the same
with my private thoughts about women, about their motives, about their
intelligence, about their capacities, about swearing using women's body parts,
or about telling or laughing at jokes against women. I no longer do (S) any of
these and have an aversion (A) for the idea (C) doing it again (S).
There is an
advantage in gaining control over our gender behavior in the three
domains of the threefold self -- affective (A), cognitive (C), and sensorimotor
(S). We can avoid those cultural and
psychological traits and habits that interfere with adaptive, successful long
term marriage relationships. The benefits of a stable successful long term
partnership are extremely attractive.
We will
explore a particular principle in the unity model of marriage called the
conjoint self.
According
to the "unity" model of marriage, the perfection of unity in a marriage
increases through differentiation (the two are mentally different), and
reciprocity (all their differences fit together).
Mental
interdependence between husband and wife becomes total in the spiritual body.
Swedenborg was amazed when he saw couples in the third heaven of eternity, which
is the most perfect expression of conjugial love. From a distance he saw only
one "angel" but when they drew near to him he saw a husband and his wife each
attired in beautiful clothes and light and beauty shining from their youthful
faces. This is the expression of the unity of married couples in the mental
world of eternity. When he saw their two faces close up he saw that they were
one and the same, one masculine and the other feminine. When one spoke it was
like it came from the other. When one removed himself or herself, the other lost
all composure and happiness, even intelligence. They were united, two individual
human beings forming one complete one. He spoke to many such couples in the
course of his dual consciousness over 27 years.
This then shows us the potential we can achieve -- if we are
willing to make it more important than all other things we consider important.
In other words, conjugial love has to become the ruling love of a man, as it
already is for woman from birth to eternity.
In the spiritual body of the unity couple
here on earth, the woman's
external affective organ (A) is conjoined to the man's external cognitive organ
(C) (phase 1, natural marriage), and his internal cognitive
organ (C) is conjoined to her internal affective organ (A) (phase 2, spiritual
marriage).
This conjoint self therefore proceeds,
(Step 1) with her
external will (A) joined to his external understanding (C) (natural
environment); and
(Step 2) with her internal will (A) joined to his
internal understanding (C) (spiritual environment)
Before the conjoint self is born, his understanding is joined to his own
will, but after the conjoint self is born (Step 1), his understanding is joined
to her will (no longer to his own will).
This means that in Step 1 or the natural daily environment of
the couple, the husband practices learning to love to act from his wife's will
(A) more than he loves (A) to act (S) from himself. This means that he won't allow himself to disagree with her
on anything whatsoever.
Since a man cannot just stop disagreeing with a woman on some
occasions, it is necessary for him to practice conjugial simulation.
This means that he acts outwardly like he agrees with her even if inwardly he
disagrees.
The woman will accept this as a temporary solution. Out of
her inner wisdom she perceives that he needs time to change himself inwardly,
and she will go along with his simulation as-if she accepts it. In other words,
she will not feel agitated and upset like she does when he overtly expresses his
disagreement. This is a win-win situation, so I recommend it, having practiced
it myself for years.
If you think this is hypocritical, think about some more.
When people are being hypocritical they have some bad purpose in mind that can
injure innocent people who fall for the act and believe they are being sincere.
But if you withhold expressing your disagreement or disapproval to protect the
person's feelings, this person being your girlfriend or wife, then you are not
being hypocritical at all. You are being conjugial and chivalrous or gallant, thus trying
to be good and heavenly. Later you will experience the slow disappearance of
your disagreements and disapprovals in connection with your wife or girlfriend.
A husband or boyfriend practices the unity model by remaining committed to
-
listening to his wife or
girlfriend,
-
trying to agree with her with
everything she explains to him,
-
hiding his disagreement or
disapproval whenever he feels or thinks it,
-
valuing what she
says as important and worthy of his attention, and
-
honoring what she wants,
whether she asks for it or not.
This is the husband's side of the conjoint
self.
On the wife's side of the conjoint self, she is committed to lead her
husband by means of her feelings, intentions, and perceptions for the purpose of
making him part of herself, and thereby making him happy from herself and all
that she can give him. The more he listens to her and agrees with her on all
that she wants, the more he can receive from her the happiness and peace he
craves for.
The conjoint self is the result of
a spiritual (mental) union that lasts to
eternity. In a unity marriage, the husband and wife develop a conjoint self,
while their former individual self recedes into the background and no longer
operates.
The unity marriage is not
achieved by promise, love, or declaration, but by making developmental steps of
internalizing and unifying which married partners must go through with
each other, like a joint growth process that takes many years of dedicated effort.
The "conjoint self" refers to a husband and wife who have achieved unity at all
levels of the threefold self -- affective (feelings, intentions),
cognitive (thoughts and reasoning), and sensorimotor (sensations and
responses).
Each individual has been changed, dropping off some traits and
acquiring new ones that can fit together. This is called growing together
through differentiation in reciprocity. The husband has to abandon some
traits he cherished since childhood because these habits cause opposition and
disunity with the wife. The wife has to abandon some of her traits, those that she perceives
do not fit with her husband's personality. Both have to acquire new traits
which create a new character and personality that can fit together as a
differentiated reciprocal unit.
The old traits that are abandoned and the
new traits that are acquired consist of sensorimotor (S), cognitive (C), and affective
(A)
traits in the threefold self. These are made of:
-
habits of external activities
(S),
-
habits of thinking
(C), and
-
habits of internal feeling and intending
(A).
The conjoint self operates as a synergistic unit. The husband
guides his thinking and reasoning into directions that he knows his wife would
approve. If he thinks something that he he knows his wife would not like or
approve, he tries to reject that idea or way of thinking about something.
The wife learns the style of her husband's thinking in order to better guide him
in his attempts to avoid thinking what she disapproves of. The wife's
continuous and unfailing motive and intention is to find ways of conjoining her
husband to herself. The more he lets her guide his thinking, the more she is
able to be successful. She is totally dependent on her husband to cooperate. She
does not have the power to coerce him or even to convince him of anything he
doesn't want to accept. Hence her success is entirely dependent on the husband's
response to her attempts -- whether he responds through the unity phase, or
through the equity and dominance phases.
Levels of
conjunction in marriage are ordered from relatively less to more and more
interior conjunction, as will be explained below. For instance, the
initial or first level of conjunction between married partners involves
the sensorimotor
portion of their threefold self. They like and enjoy to do things together like
dancing, touching each other, partying, camping, watching movies, eating,
driving, talking about their favorite topics, and so on. These overt "external"
activities involve sensory and motor interactions, including verbal, which is an
overt motor activity.
Of course every sensorimotor activity
(S) involves thinking
and feeling, but these cognitive (C) and affective (A) operations are not yet known or
visible to each other at this early stage. Their focus at this stage is on the external activity of
the other and self. There is less focus or concern at this stage on the
particulars of what the other is thinking or
feeling, as long it is favorable.
Note that
these joint external activities do not necessarily mean that the two partners
are in agreement with each other's way of thinking, each other's attitudes, or
feelings and motivations. The cognitive and affective self of each partner may
not be in agreement with the other, and they may even be competitive or hostile
to the other. What is on the inside that is not visible (affective and cognitive
self) may be in opposition and even hatred against the partner, while what shows
on the outside--the sensory-motor activity, may appear cooperative and
compatible.
This underlying non-visible disagreement or dislike they have for
each other becomes suddenly visible when there is an overt fight during which
the two partners show their anger, resentment, and disrespect for one other.
Afterwards they make up, and the cognitive disrespect and affective dislike
recede again into the underlying invisible state, lurking there, until the next
fight at which time the abuse and disrespect come out again.
Women, more
than men, tend to experience this external phase of the relationship as
unsatisfactory, painful, and injurious. Women often have to bond with other
women to support and reassure each other during this phase of disharmony with
their husband or partner. During this initial phase of external sensorimotor
conjunction (S), men refuse to accept the idea that they would be happier and freer
if they got rid of the traits that their wife or girlfriend wants banished or extinguished
from their personality and character.
During this
initial phase of conjunction, the men and the women each bond with same-sex
friends outside the marriage. Women use each other as a source of support for
the painful labor involved in getting a man to listen to a woman. On the other
hand men tend to bond with other men by complaining about women and speaking
about them with disrespect. Men also keep secrets from their women and do things
they want to hide from their wife or girlfriend. So while the men are willing to
pursue sensorimotor conjunction (S), they are not willing to cooperate in cognitive
and affective intimacy. They want to retain their cognitive and affective
independence.
At this
external level of conjunction, men feel more comfortable than women because they
exercise more control in the relationship. Men tend to resist closer, more
intimate relationship phases, in order to maintain their cognitive and affective
independence. A man ordinarily dislikes giving up independence in his private
thinking, feeling, and intending (plans), while a woman is generally motivated
to conjoin her thinking and feeling with her man--if only he cooperates with
her. A woman strives to achieve mutual and reciprocal interdependence, while a man
strives to retain independence. This creates a conflict dynamic between them,
especially in the first level of conjunction which is external, involving mainly
the sensorimotor self.
This intrinsic
difference between women and men occurs at all levels of their humanity:
biological, social, psychological, and spiritual. Biologically
and socially, women make themselves dependent on men for reproduction,
parenting, and lifestyle habits.
Psychologically, women love and enjoy the man's intelligence and
inventiveness, and they adopt the husband's ideas and philosophies as their own,
as long as they are morally valid.
Spirituallyi> (in mental anatomy), women are made of feminine intelligence on the inside
(cognitive organ) and
feminine conjunctive love on the outside (affective organ). Men are made of masculine intelligence
on the outside (cognitive organ) and male conjunctive love on the inside
(affective organ). So a man is spiritual
love covered over with spiritual intelligence while a woman is spiritual
intelligence covered over with spiritual love.
What is on the inside is superior or more advanced in
spiritual human potential than what is on the outside. So a woman's spiritual
intelligence is superior to a man's, while a man's spiritual love is superior to
a woman's. This difference is due to their spiritual anatomy (see Section xx).
In this way they fit together to achieve total spiritual unity in eternity. The
woman's superior spiritual intelligence conjoins with the man's superior
spiritual love. According to Swedenborg, conjugial conjunction in the unity
model is possible only between intelligence (cognitive organ) and love
(affective organ). It is not possible between intelligence and intelligence
(cognitive organ with cognitive organ) or between love and love (affective organ
and affective organ).
If women and
men were similar in these fundamental anatomical traits, they could only form temporary
external relationships in the physical world, and could never achieve eternal
conjunction as the conjoint self. Their selves would remain separate because
like cannot conjoin with like but only associate with it. Like can be
adjoined to like, but only reciprocals can conjoin.
For example,
think of the shape of reciprocals and how they would not be able to fit together
if they were similar instead of reciprocal: pot and handle; key and key hole;
shoe and lace; button and button hole, window and window sill, picture and
frame, hand and glove, etc.
Sensorimotor disjunction refers to overt interactions whose
motive is the opposite of intimacy and conjunction.
For instance, when a woman
asks questions about what the man did, or why he did not do something, he
typically uses this occasion to attack her or to act in an unfriendly and unsexy
way towards her. For example, he might raise his voice threateningly and say,
"There is nothing wrong with the way I did it, OK?" Or things like that
which he says in a rough voice intended to intimidate or scare her away from
asking any more questions.
Speaking in a rough voice to your sweetheart, or a loud voice, or an unpleasant
voice is a sensorimotor disjunctive act. The message she is
getting from this performance is that he does not want to progress to true
intimacy with her. To be willing to be mentally intimate with her would mean that he retains her in his focus when he
talks to her, and she is the center of the purpose of his talking. He wants to
show her his desire for intimacy by softening his voice, by inhibiting any gesture or
expression that she finds intimidating or threatening.
If a woman has sex with
her husband or boyfriend even though she is still remembering and feeling her
intimidation of his threatening behavior, then she injures her conjugial, that
is, her motivation for unity with that man.
She feels forced to have sex by
thinking that if she refuses she would be accused of not being a good wife or
appealing girlfriend. She may also have doubts as to what's the best thing to
do. She may be afraid he will get worse or end the relationship. Other women may
counsel her to have sex anyway. What she actually wants is to have sex with him
but not before he made up for his disjunctive and rude behavior. If she compels
herself to have sex with him before he is willing to make her feel better about
what happened, then she is giving in to sexual blackmail. And the more
a woman does this, the less she has the motivational power, resolve, or interest
to conjoin with that man on the internal or spiritual plane.
When a man swears at a woman or calls her by insulting names
or words, he is performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior. Also, when the man
refuses to answer when she talks to him.
When a man lets a woman carry the load
(packages, child) when they walk together, he is performing sensorimotor
disjunctive behavior. Similarly, when a man does not call her on the phone when
she wants him to, as for instance when she is wondering where he is, he is
performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior. When a man forgets to mention
things she wants him to remember, like anniversaries or details about her life,
he is performing sensorimotor disjunctive behavior.
As discussed above, couples
begin their relationship together by external sensorimotor conjunction and
disjunction -- talking to each other, eating, dancing, driving, doing fun
things, etc., and also, arguing, fighting, yelling, walking away. This is the
sensorimotor level of their road to conjunction.
The sensorimotor level
continues and deepens while things are beginning to happen with the other two
selves.
3.
Part B
The
second level of conjunction is deeper or more intimate in that it involves the
cognitive self
of the two partners.
This includes how they think, how they reason, how they
justify things, what they consider acceptable or unacceptable, what information
or knowledge they have, what philosophy of life and religious beliefs they
officially sustain. These
cognitive behaviors and habits tend to be more resistant to mutual adaptation for
achieving reciprocity in the relationship. For instance, a man and a woman can
be married for years and yet maintain contradictory attitudes, beliefs, and
judgments. They have many areas in which they "have agreed to disagree."
To disagree is
to maintain distance, which is the opposite of intimacy for conjunction. To
"agree to disagree about x" makes the distance official, makes the lack of
intimacy an official thing between them. This may be necessary for social or
political reasons to keep peace in the marriage and family. So in that case
their agreement not to talk about certain subjects is useful and serves a good
purpose. Nevertheless, when they are both spiritually committed to the unity
model, they will find ways of agreeing with each other on al things that are
important or prominent, and thus eliminate those gaps that are a barrier to
complete cognitive intimacy.
Remember this: for the unity couple
Mental intimacy = agreement
Disagreement =
lack of mental intimacy
The external sensorimotor level of conjunction does not necessarily
lead to a more interior
conjunction of
thinking and reasoning (cognitive habits). Yet many couples achieve a certain
externalizing cognitive
unity by joint involvement in having a social life together, running a home, or raising children. They see 'eye to eye' on many things and enrich each other's thinking
process by mutual stimulation and interest. When a man and a woman achieve this
second level
conjunction (cognitive), they
can love each other more deeply and the relationship continues to grow and
become more satisfying and enriching. The sensorimotor interactions also improve
as the cognitive intimacy grows because now they are more actual or real. Sexual
activity (S) is more fulfilling (A) because it now has an inner cognitive (C)
intimacy to rest on.
Achieving
cognitive
conjunction is
often easier for women because they are spiritually (or by mental anatomy) oriented towards
conjunction as a felt inner compulsion.
Women desire to become a conjoint self more than they desire to
retain their own ideas and philosophy, which they obtained from some other man
or men. On the other hand men spiritually (by mental anatomy) are infatuated with
their own ideas, and resist change for the sake of the conjoint self. Men see
the conjoint self as giving up selfhood, while women see it as gaining
togetherness.
However, when
a wife perceives that her husband's thinking is disjunctive with her thinking, she tries to change
the man's thinking rather than adopting it for herself. A wife or girlfriend has an
inner spiritual
perception of her man's disjunctive or separatist thinking, even while he himself
is blind to it.
She can sense
and perceive the man's areas of resistance to their conjunction
while the man cannot. He is not as aware of his own feelings and principles as she is of
his.
This
is because by mental anatomy, a woman spiritual or inner mind is spiritual intelligence covered over with
spiritual love, while a man is spiritual love covered over with spiritual
intelligence. So a woman perceives more with her feminine spiritual intelligence
than a man can perceive with his
masculine spiritual intelligence. On the other hand, a man's masculine spiritual
intelligence is more focused than a woman is on cognitive issues of rationality,
spiritual doctrine, or theoretical explanations and debates. A woman can also
match these understandings but she does not have the interest in it and love for
it, that he does.
The reason for
this difference is that they have a contrastive cognitive focus -- the woman's
feminine intelligence focuses on the interactional methods of conjunction with
her man, while the man's masculine intelligence focuses on the methods of
achieving control over the environment, which includes his woman. As a result of
this difference in focus, the process of conjunction in love relationships is
slow and tortuous, especially for the woman.
Cognitive intimacy is what builds cognitive conjunction. As a
method of resistance to cogntive conjunction men exercise a technique we can call
information flow control in their own favor. In other words, they keep
secrets so they won't have to face their woman's interference or "meddling" as
they think of it. This is a disjunctive behavior that prevents the
build up of cognitive intimacy.
For a woman to have cognitive intimacy with her man
(friend and lover), she needs to know what her man is actually thinking.
A man who is not telling his woman what he is thinking, when
she wants to know that, or when she is asking him about it, is showing her that
he does not want to work for cognitive intimacy with her.
He has to face it and make up his mind. Does he want mental
intimacy with her? If yes, this means cognitive intimacy, which means he has to
tell her what he is thinking when she wants to know that. The normal way for a
man is to hide from her what he is thinking. This is the way their relationship
starts -- they each have their own cognitive life, unknown to one another. But
then they become lovers and fall in love and are also best friends. Now they
want to progress in their relationship experience, they long for fulfilling
their relationship potential. This is especially true of women because their
focus is on conjunction while the men can be distracted for years with outside
tasks and efforts. Meanwhile the woman has to wait and keep her love going for
him.
Understanding and supporting the unity model in their mind
gives men motivational power to stop the distractions and perform a turnabout in
life -- to focus on his wife as his eternal partner. Now he can start building
his eternal heaven with her. The tool for building this new conjoint self is
cognitive intimacy.
This means that he begins to share with her a greater and
greater proportion of his thinking. His goal is to have her know everything, or
everything she wants to know. When a woman asks a man a series of questions
about what he did or why he thinks in a certain way, the man starts accusing the
woman that she is prodding, or not trusting him, or being pushy, and tells her
to back off. This is extremely unfriendly and unsexy, thus contrary to his role
with her, which is to be a friend and a lover. That means he has to love her as
a friend by being decent and encouraging.
Why does the man want to hide his thoughts from her?
Because he wants to retain independence in his thinking and
in his planning. He is not ready to be mentally intimate with her.
From her perspective,
if he loves her, he wants to be mentally intimate with her, which means
allowing her to react to his thinking after he tells her what it is.
That's why the men resist mental intimacy with their woman -- because they don't want
the woman to react to what they are thinking.
Sometimes men will "share" their feelings, as they call it,
or even "bare their soul" as they call it, but they don't want the woman to
react, other than approval and acceptance. They don't want the woman's feminine
intelligence to illuminate his perspective. This is a disjunctive attitude that
prevents progress in unity and friendship between them. Men can discover that if
they allow the woman's feminine reaction to his thinking and intentions, they
are enhanced, enriched, and empowered by it. They really love it, if only they
are willing to do it, to allow their woman to react freely to what the men are
thinking.
There are various reasons and situations why a husband or
boyfriend doesn't want his woman to know what he is thinking. He may think that
she disapproves of what he is thinking, and then he would have to face the
consequences of her disapproval. He takes the disjunctive solution to the
problem -- he just doesn't tell her, so she doesn't know. He cares less about
the fact that this prevents cognitive intimacy and conjunction. Perhaps he
irrationally thinks that he can achieve a different kind of intimacy where he
doesn't have to be honest in his conversations with her. This is like chasing
the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
The unity model helps him to see that even though achieving
cognitive intimacy is a very painful process, he can get through it, and then he
will be a true man, happy and in an elevated mode of thinking and feeling as a human
being. Then his woman will be truly happy because she is fully conjoined with
him, since her life and passion exist in this conjunction. Take away this
conjunction and her life dies because her love is unattainable.
A man can practice being more and more informative to his
woman about what he is thinking and why. This means that he must allow her
freely to
have her reaction to this information. This is her basic human right that he
must honor. So if she gets emotional and passionate about it, he must not injure
her. He must allow her to say what she wants, how she thinks and feels about it. And he
must take that into account. He cannot dismiss it by saying, Thank you for your
thoughts. This would be an insult. He must do something about it.
He must change
the way he is thinking about whatever it is they are talking about. Or he must
keep talking to her until they reach full satisfaction of each other. Then they
are getting cognitively intimate. Their future for heavenly happiness with each
other is full of promise.
One of the most difficult aspects to accept and understand
about the unity model is its apparent lopsidedness in favor of women. A man
in the equity phase of thinking will think that it's unnatural or unfair or
unwise to follow a principle that makes the woman always right and the man
always wrong. Even women might think this because they have been raised to think
in the masculine intelligence and perspective, which sees only the external
aspects of the relationship. Women might think: But what if I'm wrong? I need
the man's input and perspective where his knowledge and experience is greater
than mine." Or they might think: "I've been wrong plenty of times before, so it
wouldn't be right or prudent to always go after what I think about something."
These concerns are well taken, and they are valid. However
you need to consider where this unity rule applies in which the husband always
has to listen to the woman and agree with her.
The wife expects her husband to tell her what he thinks, how
he thinks about something, and even what he thinks is wrong with her plan or
conclusion about something. She wants to hear what he has to say and what he
thinks. If she is wrong she will see it from his explanations. But if she is not
convinced by all his explanations there remain only two possibilities: He goes
along with her or she goes along with him. Here the unity rule applies: He
should compel himself to go along with her. This will work almost always in
normal situations.
There may be exceptions. Suppose the woman is ill, mentally
deranged, not in command of her faculties due to various reasons, perverted from
prior experiences, unable to think normally, in danger she does not recognize,
manipulated or blackmailed by sinister others, etc., then obviously the
man is to do what he decides is best for her. But this would occur in abnormal
situations, not their normal routine everyday relationship.
The third level of conjunction
involves the partners' affective self -- their feelings, motivations, and
goals of happiness and togetherness.
Affective conjunction is the basis
of the inmost level of intimacy between husband and wife, or of boyfriend and
girlfriend, when they are thinking of themselves as a permanent couple.
Only conjoint
feelings, loves, desires, or goals remain operationally legitimate in their mind. This is
achieved by a systematic and long term effort in reciprocal growth. The
partners give up former feelings, loyalties, goals, or involvements that are not
conjoint and tend to exclude the other partner in some way. Affective
conjunction is weakened if one partner reserves an area of their mind or
involvement that excludes the other partner.
For example, some husbands spend
socializing time with male friends. The activity is such that they don't want
wives or girl friends around, even if they are not cheating on them or "doing
something bad." But the fact that a husband's wife is excluded, not wanted there,
means that
the man intends to retain independent involvements and loves that exclude his
wife. These affective habits and enjoyments are not reciprocal. They do not
contribute to conjunction in marriage, but slow the process down or act against
it.
Still, this does not apply the same way to every man or group of friends.
It's possible for there to be healthy "guy friend" relationships that do not exclude
the other partner in principle, just in interest or involvement. Hence men
friends can be a positive asset as well. It depends. A man should seek his
wife's perspective on the people he hangs around with. This applies equally
to unmarried couples who are in love. The boyfriend should seek to have the
girlfriend's perspective on the friends he hangs around with and the activities
going on. If he does not allow her to do this he is unwilling to be mentally
intimate with her.
Women have loyalties and friendships with
each other for different goals and feelings than men have friendships with each
other. The involvements that married women have with other women is for
supporting the marriage, not resisting it. Men have an inborn resistance to
marital conjunction, a negative feeling which they have to fight against most of
their life. Their male friendships, when they exclude the wife, serves their
desire to escape total conjunction with their wife, at least in mutual fantasy
with the other "guys." This is not so with married
women and serious girlfriends since they have an inborn desire and need to
strive for as much unity with their man as is possible.
Women who are neglected, treated badly,
abused, or not loved by their husbands or boy friends, gradually lose the desire and motivation
for conjunction with that man.
The following diagram summarizes the three levels or phases
of marriage:
Study the diagram. Imagine you're explaining it
to your friend. Memorize the diagram. Notice its various elements and how they
fit together. It's a diagram about the three phases of marriage that most, if
not all, married couples go through, or live through, but each couple in a
unique way. Knowing the general principle of the three phases can help you
understand and manage your own relationships, or to understand the relationship
of others like friends and parents.
It's important to understand that
all three phases may occur simultaneously, but in different degrees of overlap
as the couple progresses to unity more and more, which is a gradual process that
takes years.
The diagram pictures the threefold self of the
two partners and whether or not they are conjoined or united in each domain of
the threefold self. Conjunction
requires intimacy and harmony or agreement. When a husband models his behavior
according to the traditional male dominance principle, the marriage is in phase
1 of development. As the diagram portrays, this phase conjoins the couple at the
sensorimotor level, but not at the cognitive and affective levels. The husband's
thinking and way of reasoning towards his wife is governed by tradition and social
norms.
The wife is required and expected to submit her thinking to this
traditional mode so that she thinks of herself as lower in status, authority,
and freedom than men (husband, brother, uncle, stranger). Later we will study
how men act when they behave from the traditional male dominance phase. So even
if the wife in such a relationship accepts the man's thinking as traditional and
even appropriate, she still can't conjoin herself to such male dominant views of
women because they are contrary to unity, something all wives crave for.
Young or "modern" couples tend to spend time in both phases
1 and 2. The more they see themselves in modernistic terms, the more situations
in marriage that they will handle according to the equity phase. This means that
they do not follow the traditional norms in many areas of interaction but
negotiate with each other on who does what when. This is when husbands share the
domestic work load and parenting, and consult their wife regarding financial and
career decisions. Most couples will alternate between equity and dominance
phases depending on the situation.
The diagram shows that sensorimotor intimacy is
present in both the dominance and equity phases of marriage. But cognitive
intimacy or conjunction only begins with the equity phase. This is because the
husband's thinking in many areas of their interaction is now influenced by his
wife's thinking more than by tradition.
What is the difference between sensorimotor
conjunction without cognitive conjunction (phase 1) and sensorimotor conjunction
with cognitive conjunction (phase 2)? This will be studied in detail later on.
If the husband is spiritually enlightened and
looks upon his marriage as eternal, then the couple can start performing more
and more of their interactions through the unity model. This means that he
allows affective interdependence and gives up the idea of his own emotional
independence as a person. He begins to see marriage as a physiological process
of growing together to achieve a conjoint self -- no longer a single whole
individual, but part of a unit.
This is a long process of maturation while the
couple is growing in mental intimacy at all levels of the threefold self. During
this time the husband will regress towards the dominance phase many many times,
which will make his wife suffer mental agony. But at the same time she now knows
with certainty that they are going to stay an eternal couple in eternity, and
this gives her strength to endure the husband's faltering episodes, hoping and
knowing that he will eventually get rid of them.
There are
three principles in the unity model of "conjugial love" described by Emanuel
Swedenborg (1688-1772).
According to
the first principle of marital unification the threefold self of men and women
are biologically and spiritually different. This amounts to maximum
differentiation or diversity in every part of the uniting components.
According to
the second principle, the diversity becomes unified through reciprocity by which
the traits of a woman can harmonize or fit together with the traits of a man,
and vice versa.
According to
the third principle, marriage is a spiritual union of mind and spirit that is
not just for this world -- "till death do us part," but is eternal, since the
spirit or mental self of a person is immortal (for more on this topic see the
Psych 459 Lecture Notes on Theistic Psychology:
www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/theistic/mental-anatomy.htm
).
Here are some
illustrations of these three principles acting together. Consider where you are
already familiar with the unity of two different components through
differentiation and reciprocity (though not with eternity). At the physical
level we can see how a bolt, nut, and washer work together structurally to
achieve a tight grip on some object. The form of the nut must fit exactly the
form of the bolt. The bolt is different in form from the nut, and it is the
particular way they are different that makes them work together, reciprocally.
They would not work together as a unit if there was no differentiation and
reciprocity between them. Consider the same principle operating in other
functionally related objects like a hammer and nail, or like a purse and its
strap, or a fork and knife, or glove and hand, shoe and foot, etc.
The same
principle of reciprocity with differentiation applies to interactions between
partners. When
you dance, your partner must make the reciprocal steps (mirror image) -- not the same steps, as
you are making, or else you step on each other. In a four-part harmony with men
and women, in a quartet or other choir, the singers are differentiated into
soprano, alto, tenor, and base. This differentiation is combined into a unity
when they sing reciprocally according to the arrangement prescribed for each
part. The result is a harmony that is rich and attractive but which cannot be
achieved by any of the voices individually.
When you are talking with someone you mostly alternate
between speaker and listener. These two roles are reciprocal and differentiated.
When you are in the role of speaker, the other person takes on the reciprocal
role of listener. And so on. All interactions therefore follow the law of
reciprocity with differentiation.
Note the result of the reciprocity with differentiation
process: There is a synergy or separate parts conjoined or acting together into
a unity. The dancing couple is a unit made of two differentiated components (two
dancers) acting in reciprocity to each other. The talking couple is a unit, with
each alternating role-taking interaction. When you kiss someone on the cheek,
your lips and the person's cheek are differentiated components in reciprocal
relation or action. When a wife holds a husband's hand the reciprocity can
generate healing power (see story below).
When a functioning unit is formed, the components together
can accomplish much more than when they do not form a reciprocal unit.
For
example, if you are working on some project you will find it helpful to talk
about it to others or to consult other people for information and advice. Why is
it helpful to talk to others? When you talk, you form a reciprocal unit with
that person. It is known as creating "intersubjectivity." The two minds together are capable of much more than one mind on
its own. In general being with others, forming a reciprocal unit of some sort,
promotes teamwork, community life, and society.
The marriage unit is of course different
from other units one can form. It is more basic, more intimate, more
complicated, and more enriching than any other unit people can form. This is
because of creation: Individuals are created for each other, not for themselves. As you
proceed with the unity model of marriage you will begin to see why marriage is
deeper than any other relationship human beings can have, having critical
significance for you to eternity.
Recently in the news:
Stressed
Out?
Grab Hubby's Hand
FRIDAY, Dec. 22, 2006 (HealthDay News) -- If you're a woman
stressed out from work, holiday shopping, the kids or even too much traffic,
grab your husband's hand for instant relief. And if you're spouse-less?
Holding any male's hand is better than none.
That's the conclusion of a study published in the December issue of the
journal Psychological Science.
"Hand-holding is second nature for kids" when they're under stress, said
James A. Coan, assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at the
University of Virginia, who led the study. "This can also work for adults."
The happier the marriage, the greater the stress-reducing benefit, Coan
found. But even a stranger's hand can help reduce stress, he said.
For the study, Coan recruited 16 married women who scored high on his
marriage satisfaction quiz and gave them magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
scans of their brain when confronted with stress. He subjected them to a very
mild electric shock in three situations: by themselves not holding anyone's
hand; holding their husband's hand; and holding the hand of a male stranger.
"First, we wanted to know what the brain is doing when the women were
completely alone," he said. "We got a baseline of how the brain responds to
stress."
Then, the researchers looked at the MRI images of the brain when the women
held their husband's hand or the stranger's hand. "When your brain is under
stress, it has to work hard, it has all these different problems to solve,"
Coan said.
"We found when you are holding a hand, any hand, the parts of your brain
responsible for mobilizing your body into action calm down," Coan said. "It
doesn't matter whose hand it is. "
But a husband's hand provided the greatest benefits. "Both hands calmed the
bodily reaction to stress," Coan said, "but only the spousal hand can calm the
mind, only a husband's hand calmed down the region of the brain that keeps
your emotions in check."
And the happier the marriage, the greater the benefits. Among couples in
the study who scored the highest on marital satisfaction -- pairs that Coan
termed "super couples" -- the women got even more benefit from spousal
hand-holding than did the other women.
Coan found that the region of the brain thought to be associated with
experience of pain quieted down even more in those women. "If you are in a
'super couple,' hand-holding serves as a kind of analgesic," he said.
Whatever the amount of benefit, Coan said he believes "the brain works a
lot less hard when there is someone else helping us cope. One of my students
said, 'It's like the brain is contracting out some of the work,' keeping our
brain less stressed."
Dr. Charles Goodstein, a psychoanalyst at New York University Medical
Center and a clinical professor of psychiatry at New York University School of
Medicine, said the study gives scientific credence to long-time observations.
"Interaction between members of a species can have a momentous impact on
emotion, and emotion can have a profound impact on bodily functioning," he
said.
Often, Goodstein noted, medications are used to provide relief from anxiety
and anticipated anxiety. "This study shows that there is a better way."
From:
www.forbes.com/forbeslife/health/feeds/hscout/2006/12/22/hscout600407.html
This is a cute story. I'm glad scientists may be beginning to
realize how special is the relationship of husband and wife. Note that
"super-couples" benefit even more from hand holding. I hold my wife's hand when
we are together --watching TV, driving, walking. She says it calms her down. She
misses it when I forget to do it. When I was panicked about a surgical procedure
on my face the doctor let me hold her hand and it was very calming. When my wife
had laser eye correction surgery her regular eye doctor made it a point to be
present and held her hand. My wife found it very calming during the few minutes
of stress.
In the
sensorimotor domain of gender interactions we can see how a woman's body is
differentiated from a man's body, and how the parts of the man are shaped to fit
the parts of the woman. No doubt this is the analogy upon which electrical
objects are designated, as for instance the wall receptacle is called the
female and the plug is called the male. They act together to form a unit through
differentiation and reciprocity of physical form or shape. When you consider
sports teams, government departments, or armies, you notice a similar
reciprocity of different role behaviors, so that they can achieve joint action,
unity, or several acting as one. In fact throughout nature, and even the
universe, you will find a unified whole made of differentiated parts acting in
synergy. It makes sense therefore to have a model of gender unity that is based
on the two acting as one through differentiation and reciprocity.
A well known
symbolic representation of sensorimotor unity is the familiar Ying/Yang emblem.
According to ancient tradition, it "demonstrates the perfectly balanced
interchange of the two dynamically opposed forces of the Universe, the dot
represents integration." In Tai Chi and I Ching traditions, the white area of
the emblem represents heaven, the dark area earth and the curvy line between
them represents the Law or reality. In Feng Shui the Yin/Yang represents the
integration of Female/Male duality: "Yin and Yang are dependent opposites that
must always be in balance." And: "It is a duality that cannot exist without both
parts." (See for example this Web site:
www.168fengshui.com/Articles/Article_yinyang.htm
In other words, it is the differentiation that makes the perfection of unity out
of reciprocity.
The man and
the woman as a couple can be totally integrated, or form a unity, because they
are completely different but in a way that is reciprocal. Nothing of the male
mind
can be like anything of the female mind or else they could not conjoin into a
perfect unity (Yin/Yang diagram shows all white vs. all
black for the two). But they curve around into each other, in a perfect fit of
reciprocal union, the perfect circle. This is the principle of "synergy" which
is defined as "combined action or operation." It comes from the Greek "synergos"
or working together. In business "synergism" refers to "a mutually
advantageous conjunction or compatibility of distinct business participants or
elements (as resources or efforts)" (Merriam-Webster Online).
The principle
of synergy operates universally where separate elements interact to produce a
joint goal.
Synergy is
obvious in the physical body where thousands of separate and differentiated
parts work together to produce the functions of a normal human body. How many
parts does a computer need to be able to function -- one million? To function means to
operate as a synergistic unit.
The more there are parts that make a unit, the
more perfect the unit is.
The human brain contains billions of cells, and Swedenborg
says that each cell is like a little brain that is made of billions of other
things that exist in a cell. To make up the unit of a human being many billions
and trillions of components had to be created by God so it may operate in a synergistic unit.
The physical world of endless space and expanding galaxies of stars and planets,
is the most perfect natural thing created. Think of the numberless elements the
physical world must contain if just one cell of one plant contains billions of
parts acting as one cell. Through the positive bias in science it is known that
to God infinite things make a unit and function as one.
You can comprehend a little better now the rational
principle that the perfection of a unit increases with the number of parts that
operate in unison.
Our mental organs are made of substantive elements from the
Spiritual Sun in the mental world of eternity. This Spiritual Sun is the source of infinite substantial
elements that continuously enter and enrich the mental world of humanity.
What is difficult to comprehend with natural ideas of time
and place is the difference between the Spiritual Sun
which is substantial in mental ether, and the physical sun which is material in
time-space. How would you describe the difference to your friends if you wanted
them to consider the issue from a scientific perspective -- remember: not
negative bias scientific, but positive bias scientific (and this you will have
to keep remembering yourself, and to keep reminding your friends. Then both of
you may have the opportunity to examine this ideas rationally and with coherent
explanations.
Think of your dreams and day dreams. You are creating scenes
with things and people in them. You are recreating elements not only in your
memory -- which is in the cognitive organ, but in your affective organ of
emotions and motives. Your hopes, fears, and enjoyments are powerful operations
in your affective organ. They possess the power to influence, even control, the
operations in your cognitive organ -- hence what should be the content of your thoughts and dreams.
So the source of dreams or imagined things (C) is our love and its affections
(A), which operate in the affective
organ (A).
Every thought or daydream you ever had, every sensation you
ever had, moment by moment all your life, and every emotion or feeling or
desire you ever experienced, are all permanently recorded in your mental organs
-- affective, cognitive, and sensorimotor. The record is permanent because the
components are immortal and eternal -- sensations, thoughts, feelings in the
spiritual body.
Swedenborg confirmed by observation and experiment that this
is true. He had the opportunity to interview and experiment with thousands of
people in their afterlife of eternity. No operation in our mental organs,
once it occurs, can be erased or changed. People who had already
been settled in eternity for untold ages were easily able to recall any detail
of their life on earth, which was thousands of years since they had lived on
earth. In order to have access to earth memories they
had to exit from their celestial consciousness in which they were, and lower it
all the way to the external level called the natural mind. This is the mind that
you are conscious in now, as you read this and do your daily activities.
After we are resuscitated, we are given the opportunity,
actually the necessity, to make a critical life changing choice. Is there any
hellish trait we are unwilling to part with?
If there is just one trait you don't want to give up no
matter what, your powerful affective organ will activate this one trait to
greater and greater intensity, until it reaches paroxysms of excess, and the
individual enters a mental state called eternal spiritual insanity. This means
that
they prefer to suffer the mental torments and inconveniences of a hellish mental
life to a heavenly mental life. Every person makes their own choice, in fact,
every person feels compelled to make the choice they love the most.
This is because in the mental world of the afterlife there is
no external limit or restraint to hold someone in check, as there is here on
earth. All actions here on earth have their consequences -- physical, social,
and legal. But all this disappears from our focus after resuscitation, since we
no longer have a connection to the physical body and the world it is in. So once
you are resuscitated nothing can stop you from what you want to do. Except of
course -- other people. Whatever hellish trait you desire to hold on to, you
will live with it forever in eternity. Also, the hellish traits, whatever they
are, tend to get worse and worse as they devolve forever.
Heavenly traits you love and want to hold on to in eternity
create a beautiful world of appearances in your consciousness. To you and to
your partner, your life in the heaven of your eternity is populated with others
who desire and enjoy what you do, but they also have a way of enriching your
experience endlessly, every day of eternity. This is the conjugial heaven that every
individual has in the upper layers of their mental organs. All we need to do is to acquire the love
for this heaven more intensely than any other love that we can have.
The unity model of marriage is a method that helps us
build such a heavenly marriage in the course of our lifetime here, and then continue it in
eternity.
Society is
viewed as made up of separate and unique family units forming themselves into a
community and abiding by mutual norms, laws, and expectations. The same
reasoning applies to the marriage relationship which society officially
sanctions and licenses. Society recognizes that a married couple forms a new
unit that acts together for common goals and that the partners are united by
positive feelings and loyalties. Married couples who live according to the unity
model represent the most perfect unit or a "one" that a man and a woman can form
together. Affective unity is the most essential, and it influences the cognitive
and sensorimotor unity that is possible for that couple.
Unity is achieved
through the synergy of the threefold self of each partner acting together. There
is no independence in any area or under any circumstance.
All points of independence have been transformed into points of
interdependence. Even when the two are in physically in different locations
(e.g., at home vs. at work), they remain united because each partner acts and
thinks when alone as if the other were present.
In order for this to be a reality, the husband has to learn
his wife's preferences in all things, just as his wife does that for him. He has
to internalize his wife's thinking and reasoning, just as she has done that
about the husband in
her mind. When she realized that she was in love with the man, she felt
compelled by her love for him, to conjoin his attitude, humor, and style of
thinking to her own thinking. It's as if she has a little version or model of
her husband in her mind, and she is therefore able to interpret things according
to his interpretation. Sometimes women are so attached and so influenced in this
process of cognitive conjunction with their man, that they seem to their girl
friends to have changed personality after meeting the man she is in love with.
But the man lags behind this active process of unifying
his mind to the woman's mind.
It's natural for a boyfriend or a husband to
express resistance to doing the same thing in his mind about her, as she has
done about him in her mind. Men spontaneously resist the process of
unification. They experience it as a threat to their comforts and status of
independence and superiority or dominance. However if a man becomes spiritually
enlightened, knowing the permanence of the relationship to eternity, then he is
powerfully motivated to unifying his mind to hers. He will then inhibit the
instinctive resistance he feels for giving up his cognitive and affective
independence.
Under this powerful motivation he can compel himself to learn
his wife's way of thinking and reasoning. He can compel himself to listen to
her, to actually listen, not just pretend. Men by instinct and socialization,
normally dismiss what a woman says or thinks. He will deny this and he will
pretend otherwise, but careful observation by the girlfriend or wife will reveal
whether he is willing to internalize her way of thinking and reasoning, or
whether he will continue to fight it and dismiss it.
A woman in the effort of conjunction, wants the man to
think like her and to understand how she thinks, first of all, and second, she
wants him to like it, to love it.
She knows whether he loves her way of thinking by the way he
acts and talks. Every statement, gesture, or facial expression of the man is an
index the woman can read. Her motivation to conjoin gives her perception of the
man's inner resistance to her and her effort to conjoin him to herself, to her
bosom, so that she may be his love as he has become her love. Through this
mutual romantic love between best friends and lovers, they can be a unity in
eternity. In this state of conjugial unity both he and she are magnified to
their highest human potential for which they were created to achieve in
eternity.
Our culture gives us the expectation that spiritual and
sexual are opposed to each other. This false legend is most harmful to
people who adopt it as a justification for their life philosophy and base their
character and life on this opposition. The positive bias regarding the
Swedenborg reports clearly demonstrates to us that our life in eternity is
founded upon conjugial love. Swedenborg was told by both husbands and wives that
sexual pleasures among heavenly partners is experienced in their spiritual body, and that
this sensation is far superior to sexual sensations
experienced in the natural mind through the physical body.
This is because the physical body
actually acts as gross material filter that far diminishes the mental sensation in our
natural mind. After the loss of the physical body and consequent resuscitation
of the immortal spiritual body in eternity, the natural mind becomes so weak and
unimportant that it loses all functionality and goes into a state of shut down
or hibernation. We then have our conscious awareness in the spiritual mind and
the celestial mind, which are suited for life in eternity.
The unity model as a method of practice for married partners,
helps them to achieve spiritual unity in eternity. The experience of married
partners still here on earth, who are working within the unity model, is a
foretaste of the spiritual and celestial life they are going to have in
eternity. This heavenly life in eternity is possible for any married couple.
The couple reaches this virtual marriage heaven on earth when the husband is
fully committed in philosophy and attitude to act from the image of his wife
within himself.
Before this landmark, he acts from himself whenever he wants
to, but he also can act according to his wife's
preferences, whenever he wants to. He remains independent. He decides when he
listens to his wife, and when he listens to himself. This attitude, and the
philosophy behind it, is anti-unity rather than unity.
See what this news article says regarding current thinking
about marriage:
Love doesn't necessarily mean marriage: survey
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Four out of 10
Americans say they don't need a marriage certificate
to prove love or commitment, according to a new
online survey.
Overall, 44 percent of the 7,113 Americans aged
20 to 69 who took part in the poll by Zogby
International and AOL Personals said they didn't
need marriage to validate their relationships.
"Across all age groups, you just don't need a
marriage certificate to mean love," AOL Personals
Director Keith Brengle told Reuters.
"People are coming online to find that special
someone but that special someone doesn't necessarily
translate into a marriage, and more so with the
folks in their 60s."
Half the respondents between the ages 20 and 29
said marriage wasn't necessary.
A majority of respondents also said they would
prefer to live together first before marriage and
most said marriage should truly be until "death do
us part," especially those in their 30s (73
percent).
Trust was ranked highly important to most singles
polled, especially for those in their 20s.
Although 20-somethings said they were more open
to experimenting with sexual relationships, they
were also more willing to end a partnership over
infidelity when compared to respondents in their 50s
and 60s.
"Trust is still extremely important for the
20-somethings -- they wouldn't work through any
infidelities, they'd walk away," Brengle said.
However, older respondents were more interested
in companionship, didn't feel the need to be married
and were more comfortable accepting infidelity "as a
part of life."
"They've probably been tested so they're much
more accepting of things that traditionally you
would think they wouldn't be," Brengle said.
"As such they're going to be less likely to have
to snoop through a partner's things to try to find
indiscretions."
The survey also found that as people age they are
more likely to believe that more than one soulmate
exists.
A majority of those polled said they would date
someone their friends found unattractive, were
willing to date someone with different political or
religious beliefs, a different race or a person with
a physical disability.
However, the poll showed people were less willing
to date someone with a life-long sexually
transmitted disease or someone with poor hygiene.
The poll was conducted between Nov 9 and 12,
2007, and has a margin of error of +/- 1.2
percentage points.
(Reporting by Natalie Armstrong; Editing by Paul
Casciato)
The above is from:
http://in.reuters.com/article/lifestyleMolt/idINL0312488620080103?sp=true
Once the husband switches commitment to the unity model of
eternal union, his main problem becomes how not to lapse into his anti-unity mode of
interacting called disjunctive. He throws a temper tantrum and stamps his foot and refuses to
budge. His strategy is to keep arguing with her until she is exhausted and
emotionally drained. Then she has to quit, and he wins the argument. Or, else,
he walks out and deprives her of any further access and input to his mind. Hence nothing
gets resolved in her mind, and she suffers abandon by her so-called friend-lover. Seduced
and abandoned. When he returns, he does not want to spend the effort of making
things right again between them. Instead he wants to express his emotions by
having sex with her. This puts her in a bind called sexual blackmail. If she says, "NO, you must make up for
what you did", he acts like he lapses back into the hostile mode. If she
gives in, she feels manipulated and furious at him, and at herself.
This and many other things like this, have to be overcome by
the husband or boyfriend, using the strength and clarity provided by the wife or
girlfriend.
This is how unification is possible and in no other way,
given the spiritual anatomy of men and women, and the developmental
psychobiology of the conjugial conjunction process.
Unification is a process of
anatomical symbiosis and physiological cooperation through interdependent
cognitive and affective operations. Now the man is unwilling to think or
act from himself, as he so often did before, and feels guilt and intense anxiety
when he acts against his wife's way of thinking. But he feels peace,
security, and empowerment when he acts and thinks from the image of his wife
that he has incorporated within himself.
The husband's approach is
different when he acts from the "dominance phase" in his mind. This idea of
sharing the burden and the benefits, is also transmitted in our socialization
process and is part of our modern culture so that everyone follows some norms of
equity in various areas of living. This is a good thing in public life because
it acts to reduce discrimination against women, which has been the traditional
practice and still is for the most part. Gender relationships in dating or
marriage may start with men assuming traditional dominant roles and women being
submissive. But the relationship can then move on to the equity phase which
helps the two partners by reducing the traditional heavy load of expected work
on women, and can make their relationship more intimate at the cognitive level.
But the equity phase need not be the last phase. The couple can then move
into the unity phase which affords still more intimacy at the affective level
(see diagrams above).
Ask yourself this question: If
equity is given up for unity, which of the two partners should be giving up
their equal power which they had under equity?
If it is the woman
who
gives up equal power or equity, then the couple falls back into the traditional
male dominance phase that they started with, in which the man dominates the woman in
socially prescribed ways. On the other hand if it is the man who gives up equity power in
decision making, then they move forward into the unity model, which leads to
still greater intimacy, growth, and mutual love as best friends and lovers to
eternity. This conclusion will be reviewed in detail in our class discussions
throughout the semester. Be sure you understand it as it is the key principle
in achieving unity in marriage.
Why should the man be the one to give up power sharing? Why
should the woman end up with all the power in the relationship?
The answer is that it's not about giving up power but about
cooperating.
The husband intrinsically has all the power (physically,
socially, financially, culturally) and retains all
the power, even under the unity model.
This is a fact of life and society.
The husband must compel himself not to use the power that he has over his wife.
The
wife never acquires power over the husband, but the husband cooperates by not using the power he
could use.
So to observers, it may look like the wife is dominant and powerful
in the relationship because the husband is always doing things the way she wants
it done. The wife instinctively takes charge of him in all the details of life,
and manages them. She tells him do this, don't do that, and, do it this way not
that way. And he says, "Yes, Sweetheart." and does what she wants. So to his
unenlightened friends it may appear that he is being dominated by his wife. But
to himself he appears enlightened, and he feels the happiness and peace of
conjunction.
And he also sees that his wife is effective and intelligent in the
things she takes charge of and manages. But this is a process of gradual
maturation and the husband will regress back many times into the dominance mode
of interacting. Nevertheless, each time he is able to recover, and to continue
with the maturation process.
EXERCISE 3.1
Read the above Sections 3 and 4 through first. Then read it again with
the following questions in mind (it's good to type out notes for yourself as the
ideas come to you).
1) To what extent do your current views on relationships reflect your
socialization experiences, including school, peer group, and the media?
2) How much thinking and figuring out have you done to see if some of these
received views on couples and marriage are possibly invalid perhaps injurious to
the achievement of affective mental intimacy between a man and a woman? (e.g. :
soul mates, true love forever, best friends and lovers, lasting romance, never
ending passion and enthusiasm)
3) Examine and pinpoint some of your beliefs and attitudes on man-woman
relationships. Examine the lyrics of songs you listen to -- how do they portray
relationships, men, women, marriage?
4) What is your reaction to learning about the conjoint self in the
unity model? Describe to your partner or friend what this idea involves, namely,
unity, eternity, reciprocity, differentiation, mental intimacy, interdependence,
external and internal conjunction.
5) What is your reaction to reading that in order to achieve unity and mental
intimacy, the man has to compel himself to agree with the woman whenever they
don't agree?
By doing this the man becomes affectively interdependent with the woman, and
thus united. But when the man retains his disagreement he also retains his
affective independence, and this makes affective intimacy impossible since she
cannot trust that he will always protect her feelings. Affective intimacy for a
woman means that she trusts the man to protect her feelings no matter what the
situation or issue is (e.g., when a man gets angry or resentful or critical or
deceptive, he is hurting her feelings)
6) Discuss with your partner or friends the diagram that summarizes the three
levels or phases of marriage: male dominance, equity, unity.
This is the end of Part 1b
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FOREVER -- ETERNITY NOW