This is Chapter 2 of A Man of the Field: Forming The New Church Mind In Today’s World. Volume 3: Regeneration: Spiritual Disciplines For Daily Life (Web address: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/nonduality.html )
Web address of this document: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/wife.html
For printing this document use the .doc file: www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/wife.doc
By Dr. Leon
James
Professor
of Psychology
October
2002
(draft 18)
Contents
1. Introduction:
Subduing The External Man
4. The surrendered wife vs. the surrendered husband
5. Rule 1: The Regeneration
Discipline Of Acting From The Wife
6. Giving Up Male
Prerogatives As Contrary To Conjugial Unity
7. The Equity Model Versus
The Unity Model Of Marriage.
8. The Spiritual Discipline
Of Sweetheart Rituals
9. Conjugial Intimacy
Disciplines
10. Overcoming Threats To
Sweetheart Rituals
11. How To Avoid Turning
Cold Against The Wife
12. Spiritual Psychobiology
Of The Conjoint Self
13. The Regeneration
Discipline Of Conjugial Massage
14. The Regeneration
Discipline of Heaven On Wheels
15. The spiritual
discipline of shopping together
15. Wife takes precedence
over the children
16. The spiritual
discipline of metanoid television watching
17. Summary of
anti-absorption techniques.
The Word is
vivified with man, according to his life of love and faith … They whose
internal is open, and who thus as to their internal man are capable of being
elevated into the light of heaven, are enlightened … Enlightenment is an actual
opening of the interiors of the mind, and elevation of them into the light of
heaven …. Holiness from the internal, that is, through the internal from the
Lord, inflows with those who esteem the Word to be holy … They who are led by
the Lord are enlightened, and see truths in the Word, but not they who are led
by self (NJHD 256)
Chapter 2, Section 1
1. Introduction:
Subduing The External Man
Now as merely natural truths and goods, which in their
essence are falsities and evils, are altogether opposite to spiritual truths
and goods, which in their essence are truths and goods, therefore the devil, by
whom is meant hell, is in unceasing hatred against them. This is why hatreds of
various kinds are unceasingly ascending from the hells; while on the other
hand, spiritual loves also of various kinds descend from the heavens, and
between the hatreds of the hells and the loves of the heavens there is an
equilibrium, in which the men in the world are held, in order that they may be
able to act from freedom according to reason.
Consequently those who do not live from the Word but from
the world, since they continue natural, receive evils and the falsities thence
from hell, and conceive from them hatred against spiritual truths and goods.
Their hatred does not appear in the world, because it lies concealed inwardly
in their spirit; but it becomes manifest after death, when they become spirits.
Then they burn against those who are in spiritual truths and goods with a
hatred so great that it cannot be described; it is indeed a deadly hatred; for
as soon as they see an angel who is in these truths and goods, or if they merely
hear the Lord named, from whom these truths and goods are, they instantly come
into a fury of hatred, and feel nothing more delightful than to pursue them and
to do evil to them. And as they are unable to slay their body they endeavor
with a burning heart to slay their soul. (AE 754)
The
absolute duality of heaven and hell cannot be escaped. While we are in the
world, the Lord keeps us in equilibrium between evil affections from the hells
and good affections from the angels. Who are these evil spirits, called the
devil? Ordinary folks like we are who lived a normal life according to their
self-intelligence, exercising their freedom to chose
what to think and love. They are the future devils who have an insane hatred
for all truth and good they sense in the angels. It is said that “their hatred
does not appear in the world, because it lies concealed inwardly in their
spirit.” We are them in our unregenerate state regardless of religion,
philosophy, or lifestyle. We become those devils in the afterlife unless we
compel ourselves to live by the Writings rather than by the world. To live by the Writings means to monitor our
daily willing and thinking and subjugate them to conform to the Writings,
shunning whatever is not in agreement, and desisting from willing and thinking
in that way.
To compel
ourselves to live by the Writings is to obey the Divine commandment that we
cooperate in our regeneration. This cooperation includes fighting as-of self in
our temptations, refusing to give in to them.
Temptations, therefore,
have for their end that the externals of man may be subdued and thus be
rendered obedient to his internals, as may be evident to everyone from the fact
that as soon as man's loves are assaulted and broken (as during misfortunes,
sickness, and grief of mind), his cupidities begin to subside, and he at the
same time begins to talk piously; but as soon as he returns to his former
state, the external man prevails and he scarcely thinks of such things. The
like happens at the hour of death, when corporeal things begin to be
extinguished; and hence everyone may see what the internal man is, and what the
external; and also what remains are, and how cupidities and pleasures, which
are of the external man, hinder the Lord's operation through the internal man.
From this it is
also plain to everyone what temptations, or the internal pains called the
stings of conscience, effect, namely, that the external man is made obedient to
the internal. The obedience of the external man is nothing else than this: that
the affections of what is good and true are not hindered, resisted, and
suffocated by cupidities and their derivative falsities. (AC 857:2)
The
“external man” refers to our corporeal-sensuous self. We can also call it the
“sensorimotor mind” to distinguish it from the cognitive and affective portions
of the mind, which refer to the understanding and the will (see Chapter 8
Section 6). These three portions of the natural mind are arranged in
distance from the physical body. The affective functions of the mind are in the
will, or the inmost. The sensorimotor functions of the mind are close to the body
senses and the brain. The sensory organs of the body and the brain are physical
objects. They receive the chemical stimulation but they do not contain any
sensations because these are spiritual in substance, not chemical. The
sensations are in the natural mind, not the physical brain whose activity is
nothing but molecules and electricity moving in patterned motion. So to feel
sensations, we need a sensory portion of the natural mind which is made of
spiritual fibers. These can contain the sensations we experience when our
physical organs are stimulated by the natural environment.
This sensorimotor
mind is a receptor of stimuli from the spiritual world, of pleasures and
cupidities. The passage above says that this lower mind is a hindrance to
regeneration because it resists obedience to the higher portion of the natural
mind called the “internal man.” The internal man discussed here is that which
is in the depth of the natural mind. When speaking of the spiritual mind, the
internal man is the inmost of the spiritual mind called the celestial mind,
while the lower portion of the spiritual mind is called the external man. So,
both the natural mind and the spiritual mind have an external and an internal
portion.
The
internal man of the natural mind operates with concepts and reasoning that is
called the rational level of thinking. The Lord operates into this level by
means of the voice of conscience which is activated by our affections
for good and true, as the passage says. This means that our rational mind
prefers the good to the evil, and the true to the false. The Lord insures that
every human being is equipped with a conscience, for without it, one cannot be
saved for life in heaven.
From this
you can see that we are divided men, at war with ourselves. The higher wrestles with the lower and the lower resists, hinders, and
tries to suffocate the voice of conscience. These battles can be severe and we
experience inner pain, or the sting of conscience, when the lower wins over the
higher. Temptations play a crucial role in our regeneration because they compel
us to face the battle. Without temptations we can continue ignoring our evil
affections until death, and so come into the afterlife with the evil loves.
These evil loves cannot be removed in the spiritual world and prevent us from
choosing life in heaven.
Through
temptations in the natural mind, our external man is beaten into subservience
to the internal man. Gradually there is a realignment of the external man
through obedience to conscience and to the commandments contained in our
Doctrine from the Writings. Our life is thereby regenerated and the delights we
then experience are far more intense and blissful than former cupidities of our
unregenerate state. Sensorimotor pleasures are still retained as proven by the
immeasurably stronger sensations good spirits and angels experience in
comparison to life with a physical body (CL 44[8]). ). But spirits and angels do
not value sensuous pleasures highly in comparison to the rational delights of
the internal man. Yet the pleasure and happiness experienced by angels from
sexual love is immeasurable finer and superior than
the strongest pleasures we can have in the physical body. So we are not losing
anything or giving up anything when our external man is subservient to the
internal man. On the contrary, we are losing most of what we can have by
continuing in a state of disobedience to conscience and Doctrine.
Conjugial disciplines are techniques
we can use to fight our battles on behalf of conscience and Doctrine.
One might
at first think: Why do I need conjugial disciplines? Do I not love my wife
dearly? Do I not pray to the Lord to unite me with her in conjugial love? Do I
not feel it strongly enough? But I think these are vain thoughts, even
meritorious. Conjugial love is not a feeling or a status obtained by
declarations and reputation. Conjugial love is a doing. It is an activity of
willing and thinking not as oneself but as the conjoint self. To the extent
that we will and think as the conjoint self, to that extent we are progressing
towards conjugial love. It stand to reason therefore we have to take charge and
make sure that we are performing conjugial love daily, hourly, and minute by
minute. Doing this vigilantly and effectively is called a conjugial discipline.
1. Discounting
Our Wife’s Opinion Relative To Our Own
For many
years I hear my wife saying to me that I don’t listen to her, that I don’t
value her ideas, that I have an automatic prejudice against her because she is
a woman and women have no credibility with men. I did not appreciate this
wisdom and insight she was trying to pass on to me. I did not listen to this
idea, automatically assuming she was talking in hyperboles and exaggerating,
since she is a woman. This proved her point, of course, but I was too much into
my obscurities from ego to want to really figure out what she was saying and
whether it was correct. I was able to make progress in my regeneration to the
extent that I was willing to listen to my wife. The more I listened, the more I
got to find out that she was correct and insightful in her observations,
philosophy, and principles. This dawning realization continued to the extent
that I was willing to admit to myself that my ideas are frequently mistaken and
inaccurate. This was a totally new experience as I always implicitly had full
confidence in my own ideas.
There
arrived a stage where I was eager to listen to her wisdom, insights, and
opinions. I valued them as I saw their intelligence and depth of comprehension.
I discovered a new aspect to feminine intelligence and can clearly see how
superior it is to male intelligence. The Writings reveal that feminine
intelligence and wisdom is in their interior mind, thus of celestial origin,
while male intelligence is in the external mind, thus of natural origin (xx).
This gender-typed difference in intelligence enters into every single thing of
the threefold self—every feeling, every aspect of thinking, and every acting.
Women are very capable in enacting male styles of reasoning, acting, and
speaking in various social situations and roles. But these are surface
appearances enacted for natural reasons (power sharing and equal access), not
spiritual. In the interior mind, in which every thing is spiritual, women
retain feminine structures of feeling and thinking, by necessity of permanent
creation and eternal being.
The intelligence of women is in essence modest, refined,
peaceful, yielding, gentle and tender; but that of men is in essence serious,
harsh, hard, spirited and disposed to license.
(…) Men's gestures are bolder and stronger, women's weaker
and feebler. Men's behavior is less restrained, women's more elegant.
[2] I was able clearly to see the innate difference of
character between men and women by observing how boys and girls behaved when
they got together, a sight I have several times seen from a window in a large
city overlooking a street, where twenty or more children gathered every day.
The boys, in keeping with their innate character, played together making a
noise, shouting, fighting, beating and throwing stones at one another.
But the girls sat quietly by the doors of their houses, some
playing with babies, some dressing up dolls, some embroidering on small pieces
of linen, some kissing one another. I was surprised to see that the girls still
looked favorably on the boys, for all their behavior.
This experience allowed me to see plainly that a man is by
birth an intellect, a woman a love, and what kind of intellect and what kind of
love they are in their beginnings. So I could see what a man's intellect would
be like, if it developed without being linked with feminine love, and later
with conjugial love. (CL 218)
Consider the
last sentence: “So I could see what a man's intellect would be like, if it
developed without being linked with feminine love, and later with conjugial
love.” Remember this is the Word of the Lord in His Second Coming to the
Husbands, in keeping with their innate character, played
together making a noise, shouting, fighting, beating and throwing stones at one
another.
“Making noise” means that they accuse each other, but in
this case, the wife (AC 375). Also: that husbands are
subjected to the greatest temptations on account of their inherited nature (AC
756). “Noise” also means that husbands are kept in the emotion of fear “in
order that they may be deterred from evils” (AC 4942). The evils here refer to
the husband’s abusive treatment of his wife. “Shouting” refers to the “spirit
of war” (AC 1664), which is alternately applied to protect “the Lord’s truth”
or to rob a neighbor’s goods, in this case, the conjugial happiness of his wife.
“The Lord’s truth” here refers to the Writings. “Shouting” also refers to
declaring one’s faith to others (AC 5323). Here this means preaching to the
wife about how to interpret what the Writings say, by which husbands intimidate
their wife. “Fighting” refers to “fierce conflict … and
laboring … in thoughts and developments of truth” (AC 263). Here this
refers to the husband’s struggle for reformation. “Beating” is a sign of
rebellion against authority or legitimate officials (AC 4324).
In other
words, husbands reinterpret the literal text of the Writings to support their
dominion over the wife. “Throwing” in a bad sense means attacking truth and
“drowning in falsity” (AC 6693), and in a good sense it refers to “initiation
of truth into good” (AC 4266). “Stones” refers to “the
truth of faith” (AC 114, 4672). “At one another” designates the husband and the
wife. In other words, husbands alternate between periods of conjugial
cooperation with their wife and periods of enmity against the wife. When
cooperating, husbands are initiated in the interior truths of the Writings, and
thus they are regenerated.
To
summarize what the passage says about how husbands treat their wives: A husband
makes accusations or is verbally abusive to his wife .
This evil behavior is inherited and in order to get rid of it the husband must
be willing to undergo the greatest temptations. In order to deter the husband
from injuring his wife physically, the Lord keeps him in fear of the
consequences. During regeneration, the husband alternates between periods of
warring against his wife and periods of cooperating. When he is aversive to his wife, he is also rebellious against the
Writings, reinterpreting passages therein to justify his dominion over the
wife. When he cooperates with his wife, he is initiated into the interior
truths of the Writings, by which he is enlightened and prepared for life in
heaven.
Another
passage tells us about wives:
The nerves are softer in women; the veins somewhat wider,
and the arteries stronger [than] in men: the hips broader, because the hips
signify conjugial love, see Arcana Coelestia (SE 6110)
We can
apply this passage to our wife by substituting “wives” for “women.” “Nerves”
refer to truth (AC 4303). The truth in the wife’s understanding is “softer”
than the truth in the husband. Truth that is softer is more compatible to love
(AC 185). In other words, the wife’s understanding is higher than the
husband’s because it accords better with love. That the wife’s
understanding is celestial while the husband’s is more outward and less perfect
is revealed in many places in the Writings (see Sections 1and 2 below). “Veins”
is used to discuss purification of the blood, that is,
rendering suitable for celestial life (AC 5174). “Wider” means greater in scope
(AC 8121). “Wider veins” therefore means that the wife is regenerated from the
inmost and sits waiting for the husband that he may catch up to her and conjoin
with her in conjugial love, which celestial from the inmost.
The wife is
more willing than the husband to suffer herself to undergo rigorous
regeneration by the Lord since she is motivated by conjugial love and the
desire to conjoin with her husband from within. The husband is less willing to
do this. His love for conjunction is not as deep. He must struggle in
regeneration to attain to the same celestial depth. “Arteries” refers to
“genuine good” which is compared to the blood in the arteries (AC 3470). This
good “leads and applies truths into form” which means that the wife’s higher
love acquires to itself a greater wisdom. The wife’s wisdom, therefore, is to
“lead” and the husband’s wisdom is to cooperate with her leading. Thus he is
obedient to a higher good, whereby he can be regenerated still further.
Chapter 9, Section 2
2. The Doctrine of the Wife
In heaven a married pair is spoken of, not as two, but as one angel (HH 367)
Each love knows its own love, and they unite reciprocally, or mutually
and alternately. (TCR
Additions 4)
One of the
truly remarkable revelations given in the Writings is that the chief power and
dynamic spiritual force that animates the universe is conjugial love, the love
that internally binds and unites the minds of a husband and wife. Conjugial
love is the chief love that rules all other loves in the universe.
The chief love is sexual love; and in the case of those who
reach heaven, that is, those who become spiritual on earth, it is conjugial
love.
The reason why a person's sexual love remains after death is
that a male remains a male and a female remains a female, and the male's
masculinity pervades the whole and every part of him, and likewise a female's
femininity; and the impulse to be joined is present in every detail down to the
smallest. Since that impulse to be joined was implanted from creation and is
therefore continually present, it follows that the one desires the other and
longs to be joined to the other.
Love taken by itself is nothing but a desire and hence an
impulse to be joined; conjugial love is an impulse to be joined into one. For
the male and the female of the human species are so created as to be able to
become like a single individual, that is, one flesh; and when united, then they
are, taken together, the full expression of humanity. If not so joined, they
are two, each being as it were a divided person or half a person. Since that
impulse to be joined lies deeply hidden in every part of both male and female,
and every part has the ability and desire to be joined into one, it follows
that people retain mutual and reciprocal sexual love after death. (CL 37)
The
extending power and influence of this love can be seen in all living species
whose survival depends on male-female bonding for propagation. The supremacy of
conjugial love expresses God’s chief purpose in creating and maintaining the
universe. This purpose is to create an ever growing heaven populated by angel
couples who were born on some earth, developed a spiritual mind by living
rightly, then went on living to eternity in one of the
many heavenly societies Swedenborg has witnessed. The afterlife consists of a
heavenly life for soul mates bonded in marriage love between a husband and a
wife. This life constitutes the highest human spiritual state and is called
heaven. The inhabitants of heaven are all human beings born on one of the many
earths in the universe and are called angels in the Writings. We can truly say
that this revelation is good news.
The bad
news is that conjugial life does not come to us automatically and that most
people on this earth reject it and act against it, especially men. This is so
because we inherit our parents’ traits, both physical and spiritual or mental
(CL 202). Scientists today are unaware of these revelations in the Writings. It
is believed that psychological traits are not inherited, and it is not known that
psychological traits are spiritual organs constructed out of spiritual
substances from the spiritual world. These spiritual substances are carriers of
the mental or spiritual traits of parents. We thus inherit tendencies that
oppose conjugial love. One example is people’s desire to know more than one
partner sexually. Individuals who exhibit this
interest on Earth, continue to experience the desire for or interest in other
partners. But conjugial love does not allow this interest to remain in one’s
organic constitution, even when it is expressed merely hypothetically or in
fantasy.
This tendency and proneness to evils just mentioned, which
is transmitted from parents to their children and descendants, can only be
broken down by a person being born anew by the Lord's help, a process called
regeneration. Without this not only does the tendency remain unbroken, but it
is reinforced by a succession of parents, becoming more prone to evils, and
eventually to every kind of evil. (TCR 521)
Another
example of how conjugial love is opposed by inherited traits is the desire for
independence based on the false idea that the individual is the unit of life
and self-fulfillment. When people marry there is often a sense of loss of
freedom due to the marriage bond. But this idea is false because the bonds of
marriage and union create a state of heavenly freedom, while what is opposed to
this bond is rooted in infernal freedom, which is actually slavery to inherited
evil traits. Conjugial love establishes the married couple as the unit of human
life giving the partners a wholeness and completeness they do not have outside
the union.
For
conjugial love to develop with a couple it is necessary for both husband and
wife to overcome the inborn resistance husbands have for it. Marriage starts in
the external mind of the partners through commitment and natural love for one
another. This love is not yet conjugial love, which is a spiritual love, and
the relationship is not yet a spiritual one, not yet an inner union of minds.
In order for conjugial love to develop and grow the husband and wife must
change their inner character by defeating all the inherited forces that are
opposed to their conjugial union. The Writings teach that only couples that go
beyond the external bond of marriage into an internal union of minds can be
together as an angel couple in heaven. It is therefore of the utmost importance
to gain the knowledge of how to accomplish this since it doesn’t happen
automatically even with married individuals who sincerely love each other from
a natural love and are devoted to each other from loyalty and friendship.
The
Writings show how the natural love between partners joined together through an
external bond is not spiritually deep enough and as soon as external conditions
change and become a challenge, the love seems to evaporate and instead there is
anger, rage, resentment, and disdain. Due to the spiritual constitution of men
and women, there is more resistance to conjugial love on the part of husbands.
Wives are born with an inclination towards marriage and a desire to move on to
an internal or spiritual union, as long as the husband also desires it.
Husbands on the other hand are born with an inclination for having multiple
sexual partners and feel restricted by the marriage bond to one wife. As a
result, husbands need special help in order to be able to overcome their inborn
resistance to conjugial love, which is “the love of one of the sex,” in
contrast to the “love of the sex,” which is natural, not spiritual, and roving.
1. A
Philosophy Of Action Or
Spiritual Discipline
The
“Doctrine of the Wife” designates a philosophy of action, or spiritual
discipline, for husbands that is based on the Writings and is intended to help
them overcome their resistance to conjugial love.
In summary,
this doctrine says that the husband's regeneration or self-change efforts, to
be successful, must be focused on his wife and through his wife. She is to be
accepted as the seeing eye in the marriage
relationship and he needs to agree to voluntarily subjugate all of his
resistances to her wisdom and inner perception in everything pertaining to
their relationship. Swedenborg explains the mechanism whereby the Lord gives a
special perception to each wife about her husband's affections and
inclinations, knowledge which is not given to the husband so that he is only
dimly aware of his own inner tendencies. The spiritual purpose for this
difference in perceptual powers is to make the husband's regeneration dependent
on his wife. This is called "cleaving to the wife" in the Old
Testament, and is a Divine commandment enjoined on every husband. Without
following this commandment the husband cannot be regenerated, hence cannot have
an eternal marriage in heaven with this or any other wife.
People who are in a state of truly conjugial love look to
eternity in their marriage because eternity is inherent in this love. Its
eternity is owing to the fact that this love in the wife and wisdom in the
husband grow to eternity, and as these grow or progress, the partners enter
more and more deeply into the blessings of heaven -- blessings which their
wisdom and love of wisdom at the same time carry concealed within them. If one
were to snatch away an idea of eternity, therefore, or if by some chance it
should slip from their minds, it would be as though they were cast down from
heaven. (CL. 216)
In people who did not have conjugial love there is no
spiritual or inner bond, but only a natural or outer one; and if an inner bond
does not hold the outer one in its order and course, it does not last. (CL 320)
Conjugial
union depends therefore on the willingness of the two partners to modify their
inner character into a form that makes them fit together spiritually. Since
husbands put up more resistance to this union than wives, it is necessary to
give them spiritual tools that can overcome their own internal resistance.
2. Men’s
Resistance To Conjugial
Love
Wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in
them to wish to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in
their will they constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to
unite themselves with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But
it is different with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but
designed to receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive
it, the more readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail
to receive it, their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait. (CL
216)
Many
husbands resist the process of conjugial unification with such intensity and
ferocity that it appears they are hell-bent on destroying their union, their
marriage, and their heavenly place with their wife. This is true whether or not
the husband is a member of the
Concerning
conjugial love, the Writings identify a natural opposition between men and
women regarding their receptivity to it:
Wives love the bonds of marriage, provided that their
husbands love them too. (CL 217)
It is different with husbands. Because they are not born
forms of love, but are receivers of that love from their wives, therefore to
the degree that they receive it, to that degree their wives enter into them
with their love. But to the degree they do not receive it,
their wives stand outside with their love and wait. (CL 216)
Avoiding
the conjugial union is natural and inherited for men as well as being fully
supported and reinforced by a masculinized society. New Church husbands have a
distinct opportunity to liberate themselves from this inherited evil by using a
systematic self-change method to achieve freedom. This method is the Doctrine
of the Wife, namely, a set of commandments extracted from the Writings to help
Passages in
the Writings that discuss men's understanding and women's affections are
sometimes interpreted by men to mean that Scripture gives them the role of ruling
over women or "having predominance" in relation to understanding or
intellectual things, since men are born a form of understanding. While women should rule or "have predominance" in
relation to affect ional things relating to feelings and love. In order
to see the error of this attitude, we need to draw a distinction between
(a) what the Writings say in the
literal
and
(b) the conclusion we draw from the
literal.
In this
case the Writings say that men are a form of understanding and women a form of
love. What conclusion are we to draw? Are we to conclude,
(c) that in matters of Church
governance or some other forensic or intellectual issue, men should
predominate; but in matters of domestic order and works of charity or
community, women should predominate?
Is this a
correct conclusion? Part (a) is far from part (c) which is a political
application having to do with governance and community relations. Whatever
social applications one makes from Doctrine or from the Word is not in itself
the Word or Doctrine. The Doctrine of the Church in the Writings does not
actually say that men should predominate in Church administration or that women
should be excluded. It is not correct to say that the Writings or the
Doctrine of the Church give men the Divine right to have predominance over
women in any area of life, intellectual or otherwise.
The claim
that men should predominate over women in decision-making in any given area of
society appears to be a self-serving policy by a masculinized society. The persuasion
guarantees that men will rule over women in everyday life--at home, Church,
profession, in managing things, making the final decisions, prevailing in
opinion, in short, recreating and maintaining a man's world. The Doctrine of
the Wife interprets the passages in the Writings relating to men’s
understanding and women’s affections as indicating that the husband's
understanding should unite with the wife's will, instead of predominate. And
since the will rules the understanding, it would make more sense to say that it
is the wife who is to rule the husband's understanding. It is therefore the
feminization of marriage that creates its sanctification and fulfillment.
Note
carefully that this is totally different from the idea that women should rule
over men. For we are talking about men’s voluntary choice
of acting form themselves or from their wife. When a wife rules over
her husband it is a disorderly state (CL 291). Instead, the husband chooses to
act from his wife’s will instead of his own. This is a free choice and can end
at any time he so wishes. The wife has no power to make him act from herself. This
is something the husband must do and enforce on himself.
Whether you
say "ruling over" or "having predominance over" is the same
in terms of the actual consequence, which is that the will of one prevails over
the other. But there is an essential difference between ruling over someone by
domination and ruling over someone by voluntary submission or cooperation. For
instance, the police force in a democracy rules over the population in daily
activities in public places. This is not oppression or domination as long as
the population willingly and rationally submits to the authority of the law and
its legitimate agents. But in an autocratic society the law rules by dominion
and is hostile to the population.
The
Doctrine of the Wife deals with the husband's voluntary and rational submission
of his will and judgment to that of his wife in all matters pertaining to their
relationship and interaction. If he refuses, there is nothing she can do to
compel him since he has the greater power. In other words, the husband must
listen and choose to follow the wife's directives in all things of their
decision-making. Obviously this must be a voluntary submission on the part of
the husband and not a dominion over him by his wife. Dominion of one over the
other is destructive of the conjugial union but voluntary submission for the
sake of union promotes it and makes it spiritual.
The infernal marriage, with those
who are in the love of ruling and are atheists. On the part of the man there is
deadly hatred. But, still, he is manifestly the servant and slave of the wife,
so that he dares not murmur against her will: but [this], when she, by various
means, has obtained the ascendancy. The reason is, because the man's
understanding is subjugated. These have no interior virtue and honor:
consequently, [such a one] is not a man. (SE 6110)
Every man who is not spiritually rational and moral but only
naturally so possesses a coldness towards his wife,
such a coldness being inherent in him in his inmost elements. (...) It comes
from a lack of rationality on their part in matters of the spirit. Every man
who is irrational in matters of the spirit is inmostly cold to his wife and inmostly
warm toward harlots." (CL 294).
New Church
husbands who acknowledge the Writings as the Word may have the temptation of
thinking that because they possess the Word of the Second Coming, they are
automatically spiritual. However the Writings teach that it is not the Word
that makes the Church but the understanding of the Word, and not even this, but
the degree to which people live in accordance with their understanding of the
Word (TCR 245). And so the study of and expertise in the
Writings do not in themselves make us spiritual. Husbands who study the
Writings and worship the Divine Human nevertheless remain natural, hate the
conjugial, remain unregenerate, and love unchaste sex--until and to the extent
that they live their daily life in accordance with their doctrine. The Doctrine
of the Wife will help husbands live their life according to their understanding
of Divine Truth. Every husband must create adequate and effective Doctrine for
himself so that he may strive to live according to it. It is in this striving
that the Lord can be present by influx. Without this striving the Lord cannot
be present in actuality, as taught in the Writings (xx).
3. Conjugial
Commandments In The
Writings
The Word cannot be understood except by means of doctrine
from the Word. The doctrine of the church must be from the Word … The Word
without doctrine is not understood … They who are in enlightenment form for
themselves doctrine from the Word … Doctrine formed by one enlightened may
afterwards be confirmed by things rational and scientific; and that thus it is
more fully understood, and is corroborated (WH 8)
In the Word
of the Writings, the Lord has given a number of new commandments to husbands
who aspire to become one angel with a conjugial wife. The Doctrine of the
Wife is a collection of these commandments and its purpose is to assist
regenerating husbands in their difficult task. I can hope that the Doctrine
of the Wife will become an ever-expanding body of knowledge, as future
generations of regenerating husbands contribute to it through the expansion and
deepening of their conjugial relationship. Representing the ideas of the wife
will be a primary concern in this knowledge base cumulated by
This new
state of culture and consciousness will be higher than all the preceding states
of humanity on this earth. This is why the Writings call the
The future
of humanity depends on the success of husbands in learning to conjoin to their
wife on the internal plane of the mind and not just on the external plane of
the body and material possessions. This internal conjunction is called
conjugial love and is the basis of all other loves in the universe. All other
loves are derivative of this one great love. But the husband cannot from his
own self conjoin to his wife in an internal way. He appears to be able to do
this externally or socially, but he cannot be conjoined in the internal mind
without becoming aware of the existence of the internal mind. This is normally
closed to his conscious awareness while he is still in the early stages of
regeneration. By acknowledging the Doctrine of the Wife, and then striving to
follow it, the husband is spiritually empowered by the Lord to overcome himself
through the act of enthroning the wife in his mind. By doing this, the
husband’s internal mind is activated and made operative in his awareness or
consciousness. The principles in the Doctrine of the Wife make explicit in the
husband’s mind that there needs to be an internal relationship with the wife
and how he can foster it.
To enthrone
the wife means to conjoin his cognitions or reasoning quality with her
affections or needs. This can be done only by loving her affections more
than his own, which means following her will or
judgment rather than his own whenever they are opposed. By suffering
himself to be led by her affections, the husband receives new cognitions that
are harmonious with the wife’s affections. These new cognitions are new
spiritual truths from the Lord given the man through his acceptance of the
wife’s affections as-if his own. In the Heavenly Doctrine (or Swedenborg’s
Writings) the Lord gave husbands a long list of commandments to follow in order
to allow them to achieve this internal union, each husband with his wife. The Doctrine
of the Wife is not only a collection of these commandments but an exposition
and explanation of them.
The
following are some examples of conjugial commandments for husbands. Note how
easy it would be to overlook these passages and not see them as commandments,
but husbands who are zealous for conjugial love can perceive and acknowledge
the commandments in these passages.
(1) All
human development is in relation to marriage
(see CL 191).
Therefore
unmarried men are to be considered "pre-husbands" in the sense we
think of "preschool" as a state that prepares for the real thing. One
implication of this commandment is that the curriculum in biology and
psychology needs to introduce all concepts and goals in human behavior as
arranged in a hierarchy with the top always being the conjugial union. The
hierarchy of affections corresponds to the hierarchy of goals so that the top
affection or love is also the primary goal that governs all other goals.
(2)
Husbands are wiser and more spiritual than unmarried men
(see CL 199).
The Lord's
commandment in the Old and New Testaments that a man shall leave his father and
mother and cleave to his wife, means that the man should dethrone his own
affections ("father and mother") and enthrone his wife's affections in
his own mind, thus to "cleave" unto her (Conjugial Love No 194). The
implication of this principle is that every boy’s education and socialization
process ought to be oriented towards becoming a husband and letting his wife
change his old character called “father and mother” into a new conjoint
character called “one flesh.” In order for her to achieve this, he must give
her all the help he can muster through daily interactions of a conjoint nature
called “cleaving to his wife.” The Doctrine of the Wife is a collection of
principles that foster the husband’s angelic development. A single man ought to
think of himself as a pre-husband. A single man should look at every woman as
someone’s wife. Feminity and feminization ought to be valued as the ideal state
of society and the world. Becoming a husband ought to be seen as a biological
necessity and an essential step for spiritual development towards becoming
whole and complete. As the Writings put it “marriage is a
person's fulfillment, since it makes a person fully a person” (CL 156).
(3) Women's
intelligence is like the Lord's intelligence, but men's intelligence is not
(see CL 218).
And behold Isaac was laughing with Rebekah his woman. That
this signifies that … Divine good was adjoined to Divine truth, is evident from
the representation of Isaac, as being the Divine good of the Lord's rational …
and from the representation of Rebekah, as being the Divine truth of the Lord's
rational (AC 3392)
The rational with the Lord … is represented by Sarah (AC
2189)
Here it is
said that the Lord’s Divine Rational within which is the Divine Truth is
represented by the wife. Women's intelligence, like the Lord's, is described in
the Writings as "modest, gracious, peaceable, compliant, soft and
gentle," while men's is described as "critical, rough, resistant,
argumentative, and given to intemperance." The implication of this for
husbands is to reinforce in their mind the Doctrine of the Wife as long as
their highest objective in life is to form a conjoint union. Unless husbands
elevate the conjugial goal to the highest position in their goal-hierarchy,
their life is not in the Lord’s order of things.
The central
feature of the conjoint couple is that the husband loves to be led by his
wife’s affections more than by his own. In this way man can be redeemed from
his nature as critical, rough, resistant, argumentative, and intemperate,
traits, which gradually but inexorably take him to hell. His wife is a man’s
ticket to heaven, her heaven, for all the societies of heaven exist in a
feminized atmosphere, which is the Lord’s Proprium—modest, gracious, peaceable,
compliant, soft, gentle.
(4)
Conjugial love is the state of internal union between husband and wife and it
is achieved when they will that their two lives shall become one life
(see CL 215).
The “two
lives” in the Writings refer to the will and the understanding, or, the
affections in the will and the cognitions in the understanding. To will that
the two lives become one life means therefore that the will of the wife must be
conjoined to the understanding of the husband. Conjugial love is a biological
growth process of the mind or spirit that is achieved when the wife's
affections (or will) are joined to the husband's cognitions (or understanding).
In other words, the husband's thoughts and understanding are joined to the
wife's will and affections. This is not an automatic growth process that comes
with merely living together. Both partners must consciously will the
conjunction. The husband must will to conjoin his own understanding or thinking
to his wife's affections or will. This is not easy to achieve because of the
inner resistance he experiences and requires persistent effort into which the
Lord's power can inflow and achieve the union.
Before
being regenerated, men have an inborn tendency to discount the opinion or
judgment of women in comparison to their own. Husbands experience a sense of
revolt at the notion that they give up their own independent ideas and desires
in favor of their wife’s judgment with regard to all things involving their
joint life. This is why husbands must appeal to the Lord for strength and
resolve to overcome their inner resistance to the process of conjugial union.
The husband
can overcome his resistance entirely if he is willing to follow this one rule
on a daily and regular basis: When his wife expresses her affections in the
form of a direct request or an implied one, the husband must give and follow
these minimally appropriate replies:
Yes.
O.K.
That's right.
I will.
And never
anything else, for
it is always offensive and disagreeable to the wife's affections. (Of course
variations, extensions and equivalents of these are also acceptable.) This
principle may strike some as excessive or perhaps emasculating and denigrating
to men. But this is not the case. On the contrary, it is angelic. The Writings
reveal that the lower angels, called spiritual, reason about truths before
confirming them in their understanding and thereby accepting them as genuine.
But the higher angels, called celestial, do not reason about truths so as to
confirm them because they are given by the Lord to perceive truths instantly,
that they are genuine. They do not need to reason about them. All they have to
say to anything by way of confirmation is Yea or Nay. It is not denigrating but
elevating for a husband to keep himself from disagreeing with his wife’s
affectional requests. If she makes a request of him, his only rational and
loving answer is to confirm and go along. This relationship mode builds and fosters
their conjoint union.
4. Commitment
To Conjugial
Unity
Women are
born willingnesses and never cease their striving to conjoin internally to
their husbands. Since wives are conjugial willingnesses by spiritual necessity,
they are zealously involved in leading their husband out of their inborn hell
of unwillingness or independence. This is why husbands must bend over backwards
to accommodate and adjust to their wife’s affections all the time and without
exception of situation, topic, or area of contention. It doesn’t matter that
the wife may appear wrong in some situation and it doesn’t matter if she makes
mistakes, or if she fails in something due to her own temptations and
regeneration needs. Despite her failings, the husband should honor her at all times.
After all, the husband makes plenty of mistakes yet expects her to honor his
unilateral decisions. The rationale for his compelling himself to abide by her
affections is not that she is more right or smarter than he. It is his
acknowledgment of the Doctrine of the Wife that provides the rationale, and
this must be constant and continuous to eternity.
The most
important part is that the husband remains unfailingly committed to internal
union—this must never fail if we are to achieve success. This unfailing
commitment becomes real and actual when the husband does the following:
(a) He
acknowledges that he is out of line as soon as his wife tells him this.
(b) He
promises her in the name of the Lord that he is determined to change his
behavior.
(c) He asks
the Lord to give him the power to accomplish this.
(d) He
makes reparations by fixing the problem and adding a treat as a sign of
friendship.
(e) He
honestly strives to be true to his word by being watchful, even keeping a diary
if it’s helpful.
And when he
fails again, he repeats these steps—which for most husbands may be necessary to
do several times every day, year after year for decades.
5. The
Four-Step Conjoining Process
Conjugial love grows spiritually when the couple repeatedly
goes through the following four steps on a daily and hourly basis (based on CL
293-294):
Step 1: The wife acts. She reveals her affections to her husband in the
form of a direct request or an implied request, either in word, gesture, facial
expression, or mere expectation.
Step 2: The husband receives. He wills himself to love her affection—which
is within the request, and by this, he receives it, that is, conjoins his
cognitions to it. Her affection now is as-if his own. He chooses to act from
his wife’s will.
Step 3: The husband acts out. He says one or more of these four things:
Yes. O.K. That's right. I will, (and equivalents).
Step 4: The wife reacts. She feels his reaction of
conjunction as her bosom delight.
These are
the four steps of conjunction. The husband must constantly strive to build up
the network that conjoins his cognitions or thoughts to his wife's affections,
which are expressed as her moment-to-moment needs and requests. The conjunction
steps must be performed. Unition of mind or spirit cannot develop from mere
declarations and promises, or even occasional and intermittent good behavior.
The conjunction steps have to be performed continuously. Think about muscle
building exercises, how we repeat the same movement in series or in sets during
one workout session. Muscle tissue is built up, fiber-by-fiber, cell-by-cell,
with each repetition of a movement. In a similar manner the husband builds up
the spiritual fibers of conjunction with his wife when he repeats these four
steps on a daily and hourly basis. The Writings make it clear that the mind is
a spiritual organ made of functioning parts and fibers just as the organs and
muscles of the physical body. Repeating these four steps of conjunction
gradually but cumulatively builds up the united mind of the conjugial couple.
This united mind is a new spiritual organ called the angelic mind. Couples in
heaven have such a mind and those who have not developed such a mind while on
earth are unable to be immersed in the atmosphere of heaven and live there to
eternity.
To show how
the four-step conjunction process works in practice, consider this example on
the next page, to which most couples can relate:
|
|
The usual way (does not build conjoining fibers) |
The conjugial way (builds conjoining fibers) |
|
Step
1: The
wife acts |
Wife
says: “Honey, we need to talk about this now” (=her affectional request). |
Ditto |
|
Step
2: The
husband receives (or rejects) |
The husband internally disagrees (=hates conjugial unity
and feels it’s a loss of individuality). He wants to tell her several reasons
why it’s a bad idea to talk about it now (=discounts her intelligence). He
thinks about those reasons and loves them (=clinging to father and mother). |
He is conscious of an inner feeling of anger and his mind
begins to rehearse reasons why they should not talk about it now. But he just
laughs at himself doing that. He turns away from himself and turns to his
wife and to her affection and intention. He embraces her affection and
immerses himself in it (=cleaves to his wife) |
|
Step
3: The
husband reacts |
He says: “You don't understand.” And keeps talking for
several more sentences (=striving to coerce her behavior and deny her
freedom). |
He says: “O.K. Sure.” |
|
Step
4: The
wife reacts to the husband |
The wife senses her husband's conjugial cold and
experiences the pain and loneliness of internal separation. In her chest she
senses his rejection or refusal to conjoin his thoughts to her affection. |
The wife senses conjugial delight in her chest and
experiences her husband's act of conjoining with her (=one flesh). One more
pair of her affections and his thoughts are now united and function as one
conjoint individual (=angel). |
6.
Many times
my poor wife tried to tell me that I talk to her defensively, which she experiences
as offensive and upsetting from within. A family trait, she added, to spurn me
on to insight. For decades, my response was to deny that I was defensive. Each
time we went through this routine, the conjugial separation she felt was made
more painful and desperate. What could she do to penetrate this wall of
blindness and denial? She got no relief, year after year. At last the Doctrine
of the Wife was born in my understanding (in 1985) as I diligently studied the
Writings daily. The Lord showed me in illustration while reading the Writings
that the expression in Genesis “Hearken unto Sarah” (see discussion below) was
a commandment, and therefore applied to me. My defensiveness was obviously a
denial of that commandment. I was not hearkening unto my Sarah when I disagreed
with her or made her cry—which happened frequently! I attributed her
unhappiness to her lack of capacity to adjust to reality. I did not attribute
it to me. This is another form of conjugial cold and lack of inner friendship.
Later I was
able to see the psychobiological perspective on the Doctrine of the Wife.
That's when my regeneration really started showing results. For a long time I
was merely able to compel my external behavior, putting on a pleasant
expression on my face and compel my mouth to express the opposite of the
defensive and offensive things I thought and felt whenever she was “in my
face,” while not budging an inch in my mind. She would never compromise, thank
God. She remained steadfast and brave in opposing my resistance to
single-mindedness and independence. This power she had from the Lord, she often
said. I falsely thought she was being rigid and uncompromising, unreasonable,
not coping with life’s demands. Such was my conjugial cold and blindness.
She
suffered much because of my stiff-necked and self-centered gender bias. I used
to freely declare that women were great, etc.; because this is the reputation I
wanted for myself as a politically correct and just person. But in actuality I
acted like I considered the views and opinions of women to be inferior to
men’s. My wife’s opinion and judgment didn’t count with me as much as my own.
This was my inherited culture bias and I lived it, enjoyed it, and held on to
it. I came to realize that this unreality would inexorably take me to hell,
like an unseen current that pulls a ship towards the reef and disaster. My wife
was my only chance to make it to reality, and to heaven.
Since the
beginning of our relationship, my wife loved my cognitions and instantly and
constantly conjoined herself with them, making them as-if her own. She saw and
understood what I saw and understood about anything and everything I had an
interest in. She was my cognitive clone. In the Writings it is stated that a
wife is the love of her husband’s wisdom. But she was more than this for she
had her own mind and she deftly applied my knowledge and reasoning to all
situations, surpassing me in many things. I admired her. I was not envious of
her. I felt both superior and inferior to her. But she did not unconditionally
love my evil affections. She did not go along with the modern fallacy that love
is unconditional and therefore a wife has to accept her husband’s evils and
weaknesses. She drew a distinct line and never wavered.
Her
intelligence was the deepening of my intelligence. I could not attain with my
wisdom to the depths she could attain through my wisdom in her. Later I
understood why when I read in the Writings that her wisdom is, by spiritual
biology, inmost or celestial (third heaven), while a man’s wisdom is spiritual
(second heaven), which is lower or more external. As she receives my wisdom she
takes it into her inmost, which means that she elevates it within herself and
from spiritual she makes it celestial. This power a wife receives directly from
the Lord.
A wife
attains, lives, and uses a deeper wisdom than her husband’s, even though she
remains dependent on and united to her husband’s wisdom. It is rational
therefore for the husband to conjoin his wisdom to the wife’s affections
because her affections are conjoined in herself to a deeper wisdom than the
husband’s wisdom is in himself. In this way he can also attain to a deeper
wisdom. If he does not conjoin himself to her affections he cannot attain this
deeper wisdom, intelligence and understanding. This principle applies to all
rational ideas, including religious doctrine and domestic management. Husbands
can gain a more interior understanding of the Writings if they conjoin
themselves to their wife’s affections because they are then in a more interior
state. To conjoin himself to his wife’s affections means to
listen to her requests and not to disagree on something whenever he decides it
as an exception. This is the orientation of the Doctrine of the Wife.
Here is
another example (on the next page) of how the four-step conjunction process
works in practice:
|
|
The usual way (does not build conjoining fibers) |
The conjugial way (builds conjoining fibers) |
|
Step 1: The wife acts |
Wife
continues to clean up and arrange things while husband watches TV. She is
very much aware that she is doing this in front of him. Is he going to ignore
her, she wonders? She is letting him see that she is determined to finish. |
Ditto |
|
Step 2: The husband receives (or
rejects) |
The
husband sees her but feels cold for her. He hates the fact she picks this
time to buzz around the room, trying to make him feel guilty, no doubt, he
tells himself (=ignores her requests). He thinks about many reasons why she
is wrong while he is right, and he is in love with those reasons (=clinging
to father and mother). |
The
husband sees her and is instantly aroused by the sight of her slaving away
while he does what pleases him. How can he ignore her affection in completing
this task? It doesn’t matter that he thinks this is the wrong time to do it.
Here she is and he must respond. He sees her presence as his business and he
compels himself to accept the affection that animates her task orientation
(=cleaves to his wife). |
|
Step 3: The husband reacts |
He says in a tone of protestation: “Honey, do you have to
do that now?” (=striving to coerce her behavior and deny her freedom). |
He
immediately presses the mute button, gets up, and begins to facilitate her
movements. It's as if he said "O.K. I will" to her silent request
for sympathy and recognition. |
|
Step 4: The wife reacts to the husband |
The wife
senses her husband's conjugial cold and experiences the pain and loneliness
of internal separation. In her chest she senses his rejection or refusal to
conjoin his cognition to her affection. |
The wife
senses conjugial delight in her chest and experiences her husband's act of
conjoining with her (=one flesh). One more pair of her affections and his
cognitions are now united and function as one conjoint individual (=angel). |
It is therefore provided by the Lord that conjugial pairs be
born, and they are raised and continually prepared for their marriages, neither
the boy nor the girl being aware of the fact. Then, after a period of time, the
girl - now a marriageable young woman - and the boy - now a young man able to
marry - meet somewhere, as though by fate, and notice each other. And they
immediately recognize, as if by a kind of instinct, that they are a match,
thinking to themselves from a kind of inner dictate, the young man, 'she is
mine,' and the young woman, 'he is mine'" (CL 316).
Here is a
third example (next page):
|
|
The usual way (does not build conjoining fibers) |
The conjugial way (builds conjoining fibers) |
|
Step 1: The wife acts |
They are in traffic. Husband is driving. Wife
says: “Honey, it’s very stressful driving in the fast lane. Can you please
stay in the right lane?” (=her affectional request). |
Ditto |
|
Step 2: The husband receives (or rejects) |
The husband instantly feels
rage (=hates conjugial unity and feels it’s a loss of individuality). “It’s
actually safer in this lane. Just let me handle it.” (=discounts her
intelligence). “I told you before. Leave the driving to the driver. That’s
the way it should be.” (=clinging to father and mother). |
He is conscious of an inner
feeling of anger and annoyance at her interfering with what he wants to do.
But he makes himself look at the situation from her perspective. He turns
away from himself and turns to his wife and to her affection and intention.
(=cleaves to his wife). He has compassion for her fears. |
|
Step 3: The husband reacts |
He says: “Do some deep
breathing and relax. You know I hate it when you tell me how to drive.”
(=striving to coerce her behavior and deny her freedom). |
He says: “O.K. I’ll switch
lanes as soon as I can.” |
|
Step 4: The wife reacts to the husband |
The wife senses her husband's
conjugial cold and experiences the pain and loneliness of internal
separation. In her chest she senses his rejection or refusal to conjoin his
thoughts to her affection. |
The wife senses conjugial delight
in her chest and experiences her husband's act of conjoining with her (=one
flesh). One more pair of her affections and his thoughts are now united and
function as one conjoint individual (=angel). |
More
examples are given below in the Inventory of Confessions.
7. The
Husband’s Spiritual Dependence On The Wife
Even though
men are born understandings and receive wisdom from the Lord, they cannot hold
on to this wisdom or make it their own, unless and until they love their wife's
judgment above their own judgment. The husband's spiritual wisdom, when
genuine, is to know this. The husband's conjugial love is to love this.
The reason
for this co-dependence is that the wife's wisdom is inmost and celestial, from
the Lord. The wife's conjugial love is to love the husband's wisdom to the
extent it is genuine. Note this qualification—to the extent it is genuine,
since the wife should not love her husband’s ideas and reasoning
indiscriminately, just because they are his. Until the husband accepts the Doctrine
of the Wife, he is in the delusion that he has genuine understanding of his
own, from the Lord, independently of the wife. This delusion comes from
conjugial cold within the man. As long as the husband lives this delusion he
will deny and oppose his spiritual dependence on his wife. This false sense of
independence is also the reason that men discount the views of women in
comparison to their own views. Even when they deny this and act as if they
value the judgment of women, inwardly they despise women’s opinions, as
revealed in the Writings.
Men can
overtly declare that they support gender equality, but this is merely a
political stance they put on in order to uphold their reputation as fair minded
and favorable to women. In this state of mind they discriminate against women,
discount their views, and abuse them, while at the same time denying this.
Husbands refuse to recognize this year after year into the marriage. They seem
to be trapped in this mode of resistance. It makes their wife feel desperate
and confused and leaves them suffering and longing for intimacy and friendship.
Conjugial love is in the same measure a conjunction of
minds, and the conjunction remains during the bodily life of the one after the
passing of the other. This conjunction holds any inclination to remarry in
balance as though in a scale, and tips the scale its
way to the degree that true love has been embraced (CL 318).
Chapter 2, Section 3
3. The Unregenerate Husband
The husband
in his internal mind sanctifies marriage when he acknowledges, confirms, and
lives in accordance with the Doctrine of the Wife. This Doctrine is a Spiritual
Doctrine because it is drawn from the Letter of the Writings, as explained
throughout this Section. The Doctrine of the Wife is addressed to husbands and
is phrased as follows:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that husbands are to learn to
love acting from the wife, more than from self.
There are
no other rules except those that follow from this one rule. You can see that
this is a Divine Rule when you reflect on the Adam and Eve story in the Word of
the Old Testament, as it is explained scientifically in the Word of the
Writings (xx). This rational explanation shows that the spiritual sense of Adam
is the husband, and more specifically, the content of the husband’s will and
understanding, whether from self and hell or from the Lord and heaven. The
state of mind of Adam, prior to Eve’s apparition, was loving himself, loving
his self-intelligence, loving his manly prerogatives that take precedence over
women, loving to intimidate women and make them serve him, motivated to go
after what he is interested at the neglect of what he is to take care of.
This is
called the husband’s unregenerate state. Today in
This “or
else” is not said as a threat, punishment, or warning. It is a scientific
statement about the mind’s organic properties that we are to know about, just
as we know about the physical body that vitamin C fortifies its capacity to
resist an invading virus. If our immune system fails and we get the flu for
which we were vaccinated, is it reasonable to say that we are being punished,
or being unlucky? Scientifically we can see that the immune system is very
complex, hardly known, and vaccination is only a partial assist to the immune
system. Failure of our system is not attributed to our stupidity, since we went
to get the vaccination, and we practiced medically recommended washings and
inhibitions.
It is
exactly parallel with the mind, as it is to the body, since everything in the
body is a mere correspondence of that which is in the mind or spirit of every
human being. Whether we say mind or spirit, it is the same, for what is the
spirit except what the mind is, when we know that our affections are located
and live in the organ of the will, and our thoughts are located and live in the
organ of the understanding. These two organs make up the mind, and they make up
the spirit, for there is nothing in the spirit except affections and thoughts
(xx).
You can now
see that if we are denied entry into heaven, it is not a punishment for
misdeeds on earth. For example, if you are denied entry at a customs office or
check point, it is not a punishment for your race or your legal status as a
lawful citizen of a recognized nation. Instead, you don’t have your medical
vaccination certificate with you, something that you
know is required to be shown to gain legal entry. It is exactly parallel to
your being denied entry into heaven. It’s not that your past misdeeds have been
found out at the gate, and now a judgment has been rendered against you, and condemned
to hell—for there is no other place available when we are denied entry to
heaven!
If it’s not
because of our past misdeeds, why are we not admitted to heaven?
The answer
is that we are admitted, but before we can our second step at the entrance
gate, we are seized by mental pangs and inner torture of the most intense and
unpleasant kind. We are desperate to stop it, and it stops the moment we cast
ourselves down to the lower regions of our mind. This makes sense if you think
of the mind and the spiritual world as exactly alike. Heaven is the uppermost
region in the spiritual world, and hell is the lowest region there. Similarly,
with the human mind: the highest region of the human mind is a heavenly state
of life, bliss, love, consciousness, and understanding of truths and reality. This
is why the Lord said that the heaven is within us (xx). So it is the same thing
whether we say “entering heaven” or “entering our heavenly or celestial state
of humanity.”
In the same
way, hell is within us, at the lowest region of the human mind. Entering hell
therefore means sinking into the lowest form of the human mind—corporeal
spirituality in which there are no rational truths whatsoever. The outward life
of this hellish mentality shows as hatred, cruelty, selfishness, foolishness
and stupidity, insanity, grossness, vulgarity, immorality, and devoid of any
artistry or aesthetics. Denied entry into heaven and casting oneself out upon
arrival, is just a correspondence idea for the actual reality, which is that we
are then made of a mind or spirit whose will is filled with affections that are
suffocated by any rational-spiritual idea or lifestyle.
If you were
able to force your rebellious adolescent to believe and accept the Ten
Commandments and the Numbers of the Writings that you quote to them, what would
happen? The poor individual would be so tortured that it would be an inhuman
way for you to treat anyone like that. Instead, you have to give up the idea of
forcing the adolescent to accept the necessity of the Commandments and related
lifestyle behaviors. The Lord does likewise, never forcing any person to accept
and live by His Commandments. This guarantees that we always stay in a mental
balance that allows us to freely choose our willing and thinking. This is the
unregenerate Adam whose willing and thinking is biased in favor of his own
proprium, his own ego, his own way of thinking, his own things that he likes to
do, and that he doesn’t like to do and doesn’t want his wife to interfere. This
is the unregenerate husband who loves himself above his wife.
The wife is
in his eyes always less than himself, in all things.
Therefore
she knows that she is nowhere his first. As a result, she knows, perceives, and
senses that he is not hers. He is officially her husband, but not actually. A
wife has enlightenment from the Lord in sensing these conjugial matters (xx). By
this enlightenment, the wife can lead her unregenerate husband into undergoing
reformation. He resists and opposes her directions. Thus she feels unhappy,
lonely, and desperate. At last he is willing to apply his skills and
intelligence as a man to his own marriage. He begins to listen to her at times.
In those times, he feels happy. It’s a new feeling, a new state. Now he decides
to undergo reformation. He studies the Writings, builds it up into a Doctrine
in his mind, and starts dumping things that are contrary to the Letter of the
Writings.
His mind
rearranged and reordered by the Writings, he is a reformed man, a
1. The Appearance Of Eve
The
appearance of Eve as a correspondence to the New Church mind, marks the first
time that the unregenerate husband is seized with the determination to undergo reformation
and regeneration as a Divine Commandment of the Writings, hence the Lord. His wife seen through Rule 1 is the
appearance of Eve. This is what it means for the husband to reform and
regenerate. If he could do it by himself, would he not have done so already?
How long can he believably claim that his wife is not unhappy, and that if she
is, it is not his fault, thus not something that he could change, but refuses
to do so because he is in love with himself. This
self-love takes precedence over her, shuts her out, turns her from a wife into
a whore to whom he is married. Therefore she feels used, disrespected,
denigrated, injured, worthless, thrown away.
But then
the husband is seized with remorse and pity for her. He gets a glimpse of his
monstrous selfishness. He feels moved to repentance and change by his
conscience and by higher and deeper feelings he didn’t even know he was able to
have. He now turns to the Word and studies the Writings. He worships the Letter
of it as Divine. He undergoes reformation and sees that his male prejudices,
his male prerogatives and perks, his male belief systems—all of it, must be thrown away as dirty dish water or water that runs off an
agricultural field that is poisoned with insecticides and deadly chemicals.
As he is
reformed he begins to see the literal sentences of the Writings in a deeper way
because he is honest enough to want to apply them to himself. At first this is
only a very general sort of application and shows mostly in terms of his
declarations of support for Rule 1 and its sub-rules or applications. His wife
continues to suffer silently within herself, but she is encouraged by his new
declarations that sound genuine. Especially is she comforted and reassured by
the fact that he is now willing to accept Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment for
himself. She feels inward reassurance
because he now puts the Lord into the marriage, for the first time.
2. External Reformation Vs. Internal Regeneration
Studying
the Writings gives us an understanding of what is a thing or object. Every
created thing is created into a Divine order of discrete degrees (xx). Every
object is distinct and has an outside and an inside. This is the definition of
a thing or object. It must have two properties to be a created object. One is
that must be distinct form any other created thing. The other is that it has an
outside and an inside. Thus existential duality is built into the universe. For
instance, a fruit has an outside peel and an inside flesh. A rock has an outside
surface and an inside structure or matrix. The Word has an outside Letter and
an inside meaning. A government has an outside cohort of elected and appointed
officials, and an inside authority of making laws that apply to all citizens. A
marriage has an outside legal and social reality in the community, and an
inside mental or spiritual reality in the mind of the husband and wife.
The husband
has a mind which has an outside portion and inward portion. The outward portion
of his mind is called natural and the inward portion is called spiritual. The
mind has two organs: the will and the understanding. Each of these organs must
therefore have an outward portion and an inward portion, like the heart and the
lungs whose outside walls are made of different types of muscle structures or
membranes than the inside of their walls. At birth the outward portion of the
mind, which is natural, grows into a deformed pattern as it matures. The inward
portion, which is spiritual, remains undeveloped until reformation. At
reformation we use the power in the Letter of the Writings to reorder or
priorities, rearrange our goals, reconstruct our
definitions, radically changing our justifications and orientation. Now Eve
appears on the scene, and we acknowledge Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment to
which we are committed out of fear of hell and love of heaven.
Reformation
takes place in the outside portion of the mind. The order in this portion of
the mind is a model of hell, from heredity and culture (xx). It is filled only
with nondualities, as discussed in Volume 1. Without the Letter of the
Writings, taken up into our natural-rational understanding as Doctrine with a
Divine authority, we could not undergo reformation. Our acknowledgement that
the Doctrine in our conscious understanding is Divine,
becomes the condition which the Lord has specified, for being regenerated. That
is, for removing the evil affections from hell, and planting new affections
from heaven. The part of the husband who displays these new affections, is the man whom
the wife recognizes as her conjugial husband. When this man is around her,
she is in her joy of life.
But the bad
guy husband always seems to return unexpectedly and suddenly, especially when
she “crossed an invisible line” that he built in his mind and maintains for himself.
Like a Jekyll and Hyde masquerade, the husband alternates between treating his
wife with evil and treating her with good. He is still not reformed in many
areas of his relationship. He is only reformed in some areas, those areas that
he will allow. And so his wife languishes, begging the Lord to return the
conjugial husband to her.
But while
he is oscillating between these two states of order and disorder, the husband’s
spiritual mind is being opened and implanted by the Lord. This is an
unconscious process of the Lord and heaven in our mind. Simultaneously, the
Lord creates an interior portion within the man’s natural-rational mind. This
interior portion is called the interior-natural mind and it is capable of
spiritual consciousness. This process has been described in detail in Volume 2.
Regeneration
begins in the areas of the husband’s mind in which he was willing to undergo
reformation. While he remains in an unregenerate state in some areas, he is
making progress in regeneration in other areas. Now for the first time he
begins to change in the inward portions of his mind. The outside portion of his
mind consists of his corporeal, sensuous, and natural-rational portions. The
inward portion consists of his interior-natural mind that the Lord build within his natural-rational mind. The husband himself
is in full charge of his natural-rational mind, but only the Lord is in charge
of the interior-natural mind. The husband therefore owns his external mind, but
the Lord owns his interior mind. To regenerate means that the husband compels
his external mind to align itself with the interior mind. In other words, he
compels his conscious willing and thinking all day long to conform to the
spiritual truths kept in his interior-natural mind by the Lord. In effect, this
result is that the Lord now rules the man, to the extent that the man compels
his willing and thinking to conform to the spiritual truths he can perceive.
These perceptions of spiritual truths constitute his spiritual understanding of
the spiritual topics he reads in the Letter of the Writings (as explained in
Volume 2).
In this way
portions of the husband are regenerated from the interior to the external, and
these portions give the husband an ability for
conjugial love. The wife is now completely reassured. She can now see that her
husband knows and wants to unite with her from within, that is, with the
external portion of his mind under obedience from the interior portion. She
sees that her husband wants now to be ruled by the Lord. And this is the
condition for conjugial love and internal unity.
You can see
from this scientific and medical account of regeneration that Rule 1 is nothing
but a behavioral method by which the husband can engineer his regeneration. His
mind starts in a disorder, prior to the appearance of his wife as Eve, his help
mate in regeneration. When he lives his life by Rule 1 the husband is
actualizing his wife as his spiritual help mate. Rule 1 is his lifeline, his
ticket to her heaven, which is his ritual inheritance form the Lord, his
Rule 1 guarantees that the regenerating husband will enter into the
inner marriage, that is, the external marriage within which is the spiritual
marriage. The external marriage is the social and legal form of it, hence also
the body and the external behaviors and interactions visible to others if they
are present. The internal marriage is the spiritual form of the marriage within
the external form. A couple may appear compatible and friendly to one another,
while inwardly there is disagreement and enmity. Rule 1 is a method for
eliminating this inward disagreement and enmity the husband feels towards his
wife. By following Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment, the husband gains the power
to gain control over his willing and thinking, forcing these to conform and
obey Rule 1.
In other
words, whenever he disagrees with his wife’s explicit or implied requests, he
compels his outward behavior and appearance to obey her request. This by itself
would be mere hypocrisy, ultimately to fail, if he did not also agree with
himself that he owes allegiance to Rule 1 from the Lord, not from himself. Therefore
the husband cannot justify going against Rule 1 at any time he so wishes
because some line he defined has been crossed by his wife’s request. This would
make a shambles out of Rule 1 and the Doctrine he has from the Letter of the
Writings. Therefore he has no other option but to continue to compel himself to
obey Rule 1 as a Divine Commandment. IN this way the inward unity with his wife
can go forward gradually and cumulatively over the years of his regeneration.
3. Leave Mother and Father And Cleave To The Wife
Marriage is
the state of spiritual growth between a wife and a husband. There are two
phases to this growth, external and internal, or, growth in the external mind
and growth in the internal mind. In the external mind, marriage is masculinized
and, in society, this is equivalent to the popular notion that it’s a man's
world. But in the internal phase, which comes next, the husband through living
the Doctrine of the Wife feminizes marriage. Thus from a man’s world society is
transformed into a feminine world, more gentle, more interior in intelligence,
and nearer to the Lord’s intelligence and character. In the Writings it is
stated that the Divine Proprium, which refers the Lord’s Character, is the all in
heaven and the angels are given to adopt or assume this Proprium as-if their
own (AC 8409).
In their
conversations with Swedenborg the inhabitants of the highest of the three
heavenly Kingdoms said that they actually have a living perception of the Lord’s
influx (HH 8). The Lord inflows into their internal mind with
Divine Good and Truth, the good into their will and the truth into their
understanding. They attribute all their intentions and ideas to this
Divine influx. They also said that the instant they close themselves off to
this influx in favor of their own intentions and ideas, they experience a
sudden drop, whereupon heaven disappears for them and they are in a lower
spiritual realm. But the instant they turn themselves again to the Lord and admit
Him by influx, they experience an elevation of the mind and they find
themselves again in their heaven. Paradoxically, the more they empty themselves
and allow spiritual influx from the Lord, the more they feel free and powerful;
but the more they turn to their own ideas and intentions and doing what they
then feel like, the more they feel constrained and captive of their flight of
ideas and emotions. While we are still in the physical body on earth we tend to
feel the opposite of this heavenly model. In our external mind it appears that
we feel most free when we do what we desire without any interference anywhere.
Most
husbands experience a sense of constriction and loss of freedom when they
acknowledge the commandment against adultery, even in the imagination. Most
therapists in our generation tell their clients that it does no harm to the
marriage when the husband fantasizes about sexual activities with other women
so long as it remains fantasy. They even prescribe it as an activity that can
re-invigorate the couple’s sexual relationship. Both self and society look with
favor upon that which the Lord forbids, as people can read in the New Testament
for the past two thousand years. While our moral or religious life is
restricted to the external mind we feel a loss of freedom when we acknowledge
God’s commandments. But when our internal mind is opened and made operational,
we are turned to God and His commandments and feel freedom in obedience to His
will. The internal mind of everyone is opened through the ongoing process of
regeneration. This consists of a life in accordance with one’s doctrine based
on God’s commandments.
The
commandment for husbands to "leave mother and father" means to
abandon loyalty and love for masculinized truth, and the commandment to
"cleave unto the wife" means to conjoin himself
in all things with the wife's affections. The essence of a woman’s life is her
affections and when the husband conjoins himself to his wife’s affections he
becomes a unity with her. The affections in her will and the cognitions in his
understanding are organically conjoined like the heart and the lungs in the
body that function together as one circulatory system. This is not just an
analogy. It takes organic substances from the spiritual world to create the
organs and fibers that make up the will and understanding in the mind. As the
married partners are engaged in their daily interactions their new joint mind
comes into being, built up fiber-by-fiber during their interactions.
In this way
they gradually achieve the state of "one flesh" which means of one
mind, i.e., the mind of an angel. This angelic mind is composed of the wife's
affections in the will conjoined with the husband's cognitions in the
understanding, thus making one angelic mind out of a man and a woman. This
conjoined mind is the highest state provided by the Lord for humans and in this
state we are truly human, immortal, in perfect health, ecstatically happy,
fully rational, loving and compassionate, creative and skillful to the extreme in
all things. This is the angelic state, and it is created when the husband loves
his wife's affections more than his own and adjusts his own cognitions or ideas
to harmonize with the wife's affections. In his striving to achieve unity the
husband is feminizing the marriage. And the Lord rewards them by creating the
perfect angelic mind out of the two imperfect individuals.
4. Becoming An Interior Man
From being
an unregenerate outward man, the husband after reformation becomes an inward
man. The outward man is represented by a mule of the desert (xx) and hunter of
the field (xx)—thus rough, gross, and anti-feminine. But after reformation the
husband becomes gentle, civilized, and wise. He is then called a man of the
field (see the Introduction to Volume 1). The
XV. THAT IN THE MARRIAGE OF ONE MAN WITH ONE WIFE BETWEEN
WHOM THERE IS LOVE TRULY CONJUGIAL, THE WIFE BECOMES MORE AND MORE A WIFE, AND
THE HUSBAND MORE AND MORE A HUSBAND.
That love truly conjugial conjoins two more and more into
one man may be seen above (CL nos. 178, 179); and because the wife becomes a
wife from conjunction with her husband and according to it, likewise the
husband from conjunction with his wife; and because love truly conjugial
endures to eternity, it follows that the wife becomes more and more a wife, and
the husband more and more a husband.
The reason is, because in a marriage of love truly
conjugial, each becomes an ever more interior man; for that love opens the
interiors of their minds, and as these are opened man becomes more and more a
man. To become more a man is, on the part of the wife, to become more a wife,
and on the part of the husband, to become more a husband. I have heard from angels, that a wife becomes more and more a wife as her
husband becomes more and more a husband, but not the reverse, for rarely if
ever is it lacking that a chaste wife loves her husband. What is lacking is
love in return on the part of the husband; and this is lacking on account of
there being no elevation of wisdom, which alone receives a wife's love.
Respecting this wisdom, see nos. 130, 163-65. This, however, is said of
marriages on earth. (CL 200)
In this
passage, and similar ones elsewhere, the Lord is revealing to the human race
one of the most central and important scientific facts about human kind. Every
man of the race is born a pre-husband or a husband-to-be. In other words, the
individual male as a single man is not a true human being but only natural.
True human beings are celestial, such as those who live in heaven. To become
one of them we must prepare our mind by compelling the disorderly external mind
to obey the order of the interior mind. This order in the interior-natural mind
is a Divine order expressed in the higher spiritual correspondences active
there and of which we are conscious when regenerating. This is called being enlightened
by the Lord through the Letter of the Writings and its Heavenly Doctrines that
we are taking up in our memory and understanding for the sake of regeneration.
To “become
more and more a husband” is a correspondence for regeneration. A husband who is
undergoing regeneration is the husband who is becoming more and more a husband.
The expression “becoming a husband” signifies to form the
It is now
revealed that conjugial love “opens the interiors of their minds, and as these
are opened man becomes more and more a man.” (CL 200).
The conjugial couple is the genuine
unit of the human race.
Knowing
this Divine truth gives the regenerating
5. Proving The Doctrine of the Wife and Rule 1
In the celestial Church good resided with the husband and
the truth of that good with the wife; but in the spiritual Church truth resided
with the man and the good of that truth with the wife: Such is and was the
actual relationship between the two, for in human beings interior things have
undergone this reversal. "wife" in the
representative sense signifies truth, and a "husband" good (AC 4823).
We can
apply this passage to ourselves by looking at the main expressions as
correspondences to activities in our willing and thinking. Doing this will
allow us to see its more interior meaning, that is, what the Lord is saying to
us about our willing and thinking, and especially, how they are to be
regenerated. Note the contrast between the “celestial Church” and the
“spiritual Church.” Taking it as a correspondence to our regeneration, the
“spiritual Church” represents our willing and thinking during regeneration on
earth, and the “celestial Church” represents our willing and thinking as conjugial
couple in heaven. During regeneration “truth resides with the man and the good
of that truth with the wife.” But in conjugial partners “good resides with the
husband and the truth of that good with the wife.”
Human
action is always by the understanding from the will,
and never by the will through the understanding (xx). This amazing scientific
revelation will surely revolutionize many social practices and beliefs, once it
is generally understood. Applying this principle to the passage above (AC
4823), we can say that during regeneration the husband (“truth with the man”)
acts from the wife (“the good of that truth with the wife”). This follows
logically from the principle that it is the understanding that acts from the
will, since truth is in the understanding while good is in the will. To say
that it is the understanding that acts from the will, is the same as saying it
is the husband who acts from the wife, since truth in the understanding of the
husband acts from good in the will of the wife. Truth is in the understanding
while good is in the will. Truth always acts from good (xx).
But during
regeneration “good resides with the husband and the truth of that good with the
wife.” In other words, the wife acts (“truth of that good with the wife”) from
the husband (“good resides with the husband”). Again for the same reason as
before, namely that it is truth in the understanding (conjugial wife) that acts
from the good in the will (conjugial husband), and never the good in the will
that acts through the understanding.
What is the
significance of this? What does it mean that in the first state the husband
acts from the wife, while in the second state the wife acts from the husband?
The second state is always higher or more interior than the first,
in the same degree that celestial is higher than spiritual. While the husband
is regenerating on earth he is called a spiritual Church, but after, in heaven,
he is called a celestial Church. Now you can see how Rule 1 is related to the
spiritual sense of this passage (AC 4823). The spiritual sense discusses the
contrast between the husband on his way to conjugial
love vs. the husband in conjugial love. While the husband is on his way to
conjugial love he acts from his wife. Once he is in conjugial love, his wife
acts from him. When he acts from the wife he is regenerating. In other words,
in order to regenerate the husband must act from the wife. Rule 1 says that the
husband must learn to love to act from his wife more than from himself. You can
see therefore that Rule 1 is a Divine Commandment by which we can approach conjugial
love.
Continuing
with the same Number:
In the celestial church the husband was in good, and the
wife in the truth of this good; but in the spiritual church the man is in
truth, and the wife in the good of this truth; such were they in fact then, and
such are they now, for the interiors of man have undergone this change. Hence
where celestial good and celestial truth from it are treated of in the Word, it
is said "husband and wife;" but where spiritual good and spiritual
truth from it are treated of, it is said "man and wife," or rather
"man and woman." (AC 4823)
The
expression “man and woman” signifies husband and wife in an external union,
while “husband and wife” signifies husband and wife in an internal unity.
Marriage in an internal unity is the true marriage, but marriage in an external
union is only a representative of true marriage. On earth, the regeneration of
the husband is the condition for an internal unity. This internal unity is
exactly proportional to the husband’s progress in regeneration. When he
falters, the internal unity dies. The husband is not much aware of the internal
unity, seeing it from a distance like a four-legged animal approaching in a field
with tall grasses. But to the wife the internal unity is up front, right in
front of her face. It is the biggest thing in her life, all other things having
a smaller importance. This is how she feels and is from creation.
Prior to
regeneration, the husband acts from his own will. This unregenerate male mental
state is as deadly as a poisonous snake and as slick as an eel. Deadly to himself and slick in his apparent inability to see his
own spiritual insanity. Everyone prior to regeneration is spiritually
insane (xx). Women marry the unregenerate man, who then becomes their
unregenerate husband, rough and painful, self-involved, loving the masculine
sphere above that of the feminine. The unregenerate husband is toxic to his
wife, in whom conjugial love is present from nativity (xx). He hates conjugial
love because the unregenerate mind hates what is heavenly, and hates conjugial
love more than any other thing in the universe because it is the highest and
most central of all heavenly loves and truths.
The Lord
has therefore provided the
To oppose
Rule 1 is to keep the marriage in an external union, merely legal, social, and
convenient for multiple reasons. To adopt Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline
is to move the marriage into its interior unity.
How does
Rule 1 work? why does it work? Consider this passage:
As speech is the form of sound, so man may be described as
the form of the wife; they are one flesh; a man shall cleave to his wife; the
wife is the man's soul, and life, or is the heart of the man; but neither knows
anything else than that the other is his, or hers, and that each is the other's
reciprocally and mutually. (SE 6110)
“Man” here
signifies the husband who makes Rule 1 into a regeneration discipline. The
husband who loves to act from his wife is the “man” here described. The husband
is created to be the form of his wife. That he is “created” means that his
regeneration creates a “man” out of him, that is, a conjugial husband. Man is
created the form of his wife because man is born an understanding of truth
while woman is born a will or affection of truth (xx). Every man attains the perfection of his creation when he allows himself
to be regenerated by the Lord. To allow himself to
be regenerated means that he compels himself to act form the wife, not from
himself. He has to desist from acting from himself since this is evil, as all
things of the unregenerate man are evil (xx). Hence Rule 1 is his very
salvation, the bridge that leads him away from hell and to heaven.
Note this
amazing scientific revelation: “a man shall cleave to his wife; the wife is the
man's soul, and life, or is the heart of the man.” This refers to the
regenerating husband who follows Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline. The
expression “to cleave to his wife” signifies the application of Rule 1 in his
everyday interactions with his wife, which means, always, since the external
union of marriage makes one responsible to the other 24 hours a day. The
expression “the wife is the man’s soul” signifies that when he loves to act
from his wife, his will can be regenerated, so that form an infernal man he can
become celestial. The expression “the man’s soul” refers to his will because a
man is nothing but his affections, and his affections are in the will. Therefore
in his will is not regenerated, he remains infernal, which is referred to as
the soul dying or being destroyed.
The
Doctrine of the Wife is called here “the man’s soul” because this Doctrine
regenerates his will. And the regenerated will is his new “life.” This new
celestial life is said to be “in the heart of the man” because heart represents
the love of his will. When he loves to act from the wife (Rule 1) his wife is
in his heart, and she is his soul, therefore, his life. To cleave to his wife
is man’s life because he then acts from her, not from himself. To act from himself is death because he then cannot be regenerated.
The husband's life enters the wife, through the thighs, and
by means of love. How truth then becomes good, or understanding, the will of
the wife, and how, finally, the husband's understanding becomes the form of the
wife's affection. (SE 6110)
Here it is
specified what Rule 1 is, namely, it is “the husband's understanding [when it] becomes
the form of the wife's affection.” The “wife’s affection” signifies to act from
the wife since the understanding acts from the will and affection is in the
will. When the husband’s acts from the wife’s will he is said to “enter her
through the thighs, and by means of love.” This is the meaning of loving the
wife: To cleave to her, to act from her will, and to love this. To love to act from her affections is the
true love that unites.
To become “the form” of the wife’s
affection, the husband has to appropriate to himself the wife’s affection.
The wife’s
affection, now in the husband’s will, motivates and
directs all his thinking. His willing is according to her affection, and
therefore his thinking will also be, as a consequence of the first. This is
what creates the internal unity of conjugial couples.
But once
they are completed as a conjugial couple, it is said that the wife acts from
the husband. This is a way of saying that the husband and the wife act from
each other. Nothing else would be logical. The husband’s understanding has been
formed by the wife’s affection during regeneration. Now, this understanding is
therefore her understanding in her husband since it was formed by her
affections. Therefore she acts from this understanding. She doesn’t act from
her own understanding for this would not be unity.
Any widow. That this signifies those who are
in good without truth, and yet long for truth, is evident from the
signification of "a widow," as being good without truth, and yet
longing for it. That "a widow" has this signification is because by
"a man" is signified truth, and by his "woman" is signified
good; and therefore when the woman of a man becomes a
widow, she signifies good without truth.
But in a still more interior sense "a widow"
signifies truth without good. The reason is that in this sense "a
husband" signifies good, and his "wife" truth ... (AC 9198)
You can see
here that “widow” or “woman without husband” represents the two states of
marriage when they both fail. The failure of the external marriage is
represented by “widow” in the spiritual sense, but the failure of the internal
marriage is represented by “widow” in the celestial sense. “Widow” in the spiritual
sense signifies “good without truth.” This is the failure of the external
marriage. But “widow” in the celestial sense signifies “truth without good.”
This is the failure of the internal marriage.
Good receives power
through truth (AC 3563,
4592)
A man is
constructed spiritually as the inverse of a woman since woman is interior truth
covered over with external love while man is interior love covered over with
external truth (CL 32). Therefore, the
wife’s truth is more interior than the husband’s by spiritual make-up.
The
Writings also teach that in all things whatever is interior is always more
heavenly than that which is exterior (xx). Clearly then, a woman's intelligence
is more celestial or higher than a man's intelligence because the quality of
intelligence and wisdom is determined by the truth out of which they are made.
The recognition by the husband that the wife’s intelligence is higher than his
own sanctifies the marriage in his mind.
Regeneration
in the case of husbands consists in giving up their own proprium and living
as-if from the Lord's Proprium. This means abandoning the unregenerate
masculine truth (=leaving father and mother) and entering existence into the interior
feminine truth (=cleaving to his wife). The feminine truth is celestial while
the masculine truth is spiritual. Feminine truths are called “truths about good”
or “truths about love,” while masculine truths are called “truths about truth”
or “truths about wisdom” (xx). In the Lord’s Proprium there are both types of
truths since in Him infinite distinct things are a one (xx).
The Lord’s
Proprium is the very atmosphere of life in heaven and only those couples can
live in it that have abandoned the natural order of life in the external mind
and live in the spiritual order of life in the internal mind. Husbands must
choose to place their own masculine affections or intentions below the feminine
affections of their wife because her intelligence is higher or more interior
than his intelligence and this higher or more interior intelligence can conjoin
only with feminine affections, and not with masculine. Higher truths are called
here feminine because they are truths about love and good, and these are
celestial things. Masculine truths are called lower because they are truths
about truth and wisdom, and these are spiritual things. The celestial is higher
than the spiritual. Celestial truths are called feminine truths because woman
is born a form of love and good, while man is born a form of truth and wisdom
(xx). Celestial truths are about love and good while spiritual truths are about
truth and wisdom. Therefore feminine
truths are to rule over masculine truths since the higher rules over the lower.
(xx) Higher means more interior, as celestial is more interior than spiritual.
By accepting the wife’s affections as-if his own, the husband
experiences an inner elevation of the mind because he can now be given higher
truths in his understanding. These higher truths are feminine in constitution and he can
now appropriate them to himself by conjoining them to the wife’s affections in
him, which he upholds as-if his own. It is this spiritual biology that
necessitates the process whereby feminine affections are conjoined with
masculine cognitions in the mind of the husband. The Writings call this union
“the marriage of good and truth.” All good belongs to affections in the will
and all truth belongs to cognitions in the understanding.
We know
from the Writings that the Lord's purpose in creating and maintaining the
universe is to populate the heavens with individuals born on earths. The
greater the number of people in heaven, the more perfect it grows (xx). In
other words, people in heaven continue to experience greater and greater
perfection every day to eternity. The unit of life in heaven is the couple, not
the individual, and all heaven is made of married couples. The angelic or
conjugial couple is in actuality a single complete angel. Swedenborg witnessed
a representation of this when he saw an angel approaching him from a distance,
and when the angel was nearer he saw that it was a husband and a wife. This
visual representation confirms the idea of the actual internal unity of the
married couple.
6. External
And Internal Marriage
Changes of state are of one kind with men and of another
with women, because, by creation, men are forms of science, intelligence, and
wisdom, and women, forms of the love of these with men (CL 187).
Passages
such as the above are seized upon by a man’s external masculinized mind, which
wants to hold on to the idea that intelligence and intellectual pursuits is the
arena of men while feelings and affections are the arena of women. By this
affirmation men put themselves ahead of women in intelligence and wisdom while
they concede that women are ahead of men in love and affection. This false and
self-serving view turns their marriage into an inauthentic union made by man,
not by the Lord. The union men want to make is the adjunction together of man's
intelligence or wisdom with woman's “affectional predisposition,” as it has
been called in
(a) The
difference essentially consists in this, that the inmost quality in masculinity
is love, and its veil wisdom, or in other words, it is love veiled over with
wisdom, while the inmost quality in femininity is that same wisdom, the wisdom
of masculinity, and its veil the love resulting from it.
(b) This
second love, however, is a feminine love, and the Lord gives it to a wife
through the wisdom of her husband, whereas that first love is a masculine love,
which is a love of becoming wise, and the Lord gives it to a husband according
to his reception of wisdom.
(c)
Consequently, the male is a form of the wisdom of love, and the female is a
form of the love of that wisdom.
(d) Therefore from creation there was implanted in both male
and female a love of uniting into one (CL 32).
This
passage has four sentences, which we marked from (a) to (d) in order to
consider each in turn. Sentence (a) specifies the "essential" or
inmost spiritual difference between man and woman. This spiritual organic
difference is such as to allow the formation of an internal unity between a
husband and a wife. No unity is possible between alike and alike for that
yields only an external adjunction or co-location. Note that in order to create
a structural unity there must be a particular kind of difference or relation
between the two parts, so that they may function in unison like the heart and
the lungs in the body act together in unison, each having its own distinct
form, yet the two fitting together for joint operation as one. Sentence (a)
specifies the organic structural relation in marriage by indicating that
feminizing it consists in elevating masculine wisdom from external truth and
reasoning, to internal, or which is the same, from the external mind to the
internal mind.
A wife
imbibes and appropriates her husband's intelligence and wisdom and then elevates
it within herself, that is, makes it more interior, and then covers it over
with feminine love. This is stated in sentence (b). Note this very important
observation: In sentence (b) it is said that the Lord gives the wife conjugial
love "through the wisdom of her husband." There are two ways of
interpreting the meaning. One is that the wisdom mentioned here is the wisdom
of the husband such as it is in the husband. But this is not in accord with the
Doctrine of the Wife and its rationale. The other possible meaning is that the
wisdom of the husband mentioned here refers to the wisdom of the husband that
is now in the wife, and this wisdom is higher than the husband’s even though it
originated from the husband. This means that the wife has conjugial love from
the Lord when she unites the current wisdom in her (originally from the
husband) with harmonious affections also in her, within which is the love from
the Lord.
In this
second interpretation it is clear that the wife's intelligence and wisdom is more
interior than his, even though her wisdom originates with him. But it is given
to the wife to take that wisdom of the husband within her and to elevate it by
implanting it in her inner rational mind where it now functions at a more
interior level than that of the husband from which it originated. The Writings
say that this interior truth is represented in the Old Testament by Sarah,
Abraham's wife, and by Rebecca, Isaac’s wife. It is celestial truth and is such
as the highest angels have. Angelic unity of the married couple depends on the
husband imbibing the wife's affections and the wife imbibing the husband's
cognitions. This reciprocal and organic process gradually changes and perfects
the cognitions and affections of both husband and wife in an endless process of
deeper and richer union. This is not a static or one time process. When the
husband imbibes the wife's affections, his cognitions must change accordingly
in order to maintain the equilibrium of unity. He gains a deeper wisdom than
before. When a wife imbibes her husband's cognitions, her new affections are
more sublime than before. Swedenborg was very affected by this interiorized
beauty whenever he was in the presence of angelic wives who were advanced in
wisdom. The more husbands and wives love each other's reciprocity, the more
they are conjoined in deeper unity. And this to eternity.
What an amazing and wonderful reality! This is indicated in sentence (d).
Sentence
(b) also states that the Lord gives the husband wisdom according to his "reception"
of wisdom. What is the measure of his reception? Not his knowledge and
intelligence, but the life he conducts according to these. This means the kind
of affections he favors because people are led by their affections. The Lord is
instructing husbands that if they favor the affections of the wife, then they
are receptive of His Wisdom. Then He can give them that Wisdom to be as-if
their own, and more of it to eternity. A husband can become wise only to the
extent he is living what we knows to be true from his religion, and in the case
of the Writings, this means loving the affections of his wife above his own.
These are the affections wives have from the Lord and by elevating them above
their own affections, husbands are living the doctrine they know and understand
from the Writings. They are then receptive to the Lord's Wisdom.
As they
receive deeper wisdom from the Lord, their wife imbibes it, elevates it in her
interior mind, and receives new, deeper and more genuine conjugial love from
the Lord. The husband now can imbibe her new affections--and the cycle of unity
continues to grow and perfect itself forever. To imbibe the
wife's affections and to favor them means that the husband must never disagree
and always agree with his wife's affectional requests in all things.
7. Heresies
Regarding The Husband's
Wisdom
The
Writings of Swedenborg contain the greatest scientific revelations ever made to
humankind. The center of these revelations is that human emotions and feelings
are arranged in a hierarchy from strongest to weakest, and the strongest at the
very top is the intense desire to unite in marriage. This state of inner
unition between a husband and a wife is the complete and pure human state of
life. It is the angelic life of couplehood. This is the life Swedenborg
witnessed with numerous couples with whom he interacted in the spiritual world
and the heavens. The married couple is organically united in spirit or mind in
a fashion similar to newly born Siamese twins who are physically joined in the
body. Without knowing this internal spiritual reality, an inner union between
husband and wife cannot be achieved. In fact, due to inherited evils, there is
strong opposition to the conjugial union, especially by men.
In
Conjugial Love Number 168-177 it is shown that a conjugial union is necessary
for an individual to become whole and complete as a human being. A man and a
woman are singly incomplete, the man lacking the love or affections his
understanding needs to be whole, and the wife lacking the understanding or
intelligence her love and affections need to be complete. It is stated that men
are born to be “intellectual” while women are born to be “affectional.” The
Writings also state that men are called wisdoms while wives are called
affections. A woman is said to be the love of her husband’s wisdom. A man’s
mind is born a form of understanding while a woman’s mind is born a form of
love.
There is a
temptation for men when they come across statements such as these in the
Writings. From a natural perspective men prefer to
think that they are superior to women in understanding the dynamics of life and
the world, and therefore they feel that they should have the ultimate power to
decide things relating to Church, government, business, and domestic affairs.
In other words, it’s a man’s world and women have their appropriate place in
it. The letter of Sacred Scripture in the major religions is written according
to natural and cultural appearances so that men of every religion have found
Divine justification for putting men ahead of women in many walks of life, if
not all. This masculinized notion is a doctrinal fallacy. Husbands must let go
of this persuasion or fail in their attempt to regenerate and become an angel
with a wife in heaven.
In order to
free oneself from this masculinized persuasion it is necessary to balance
statements of Scripture with passages that say just the opposite. For example,
in the symbology of the Writings, Abraham represents Divine Love while his wife
Sarah represents Divine Truth. This correspondence is repeated in other
Biblical couples such as Rebecca and Isaac. In the story of Hagar and Ishmael
in the Old Testament we are told that Sarah asked Abraham to banish Hagar and
her child Ishmael from the household, an idea to which Abraham balked. So God
appeared to him and commanded, “all that Sarah saith
unto thee, hearken unto her voice” (Genesis
"Husband," when mentioned in the Word, signifies
good, and "wife" then signifies truth. It is otherwise when the
husband is called the "man;" for then "man" signifies
truth, and "wife" good (AC 2517)
In the spiritual church the wife represents good and the man
represents truth, but in the celestial church the husband represents good and
the wife truth; and-what is a mystery-they not only represent, but also in all
their activities correspond to them. (AC 4434)
This is
another example showing that the intelligence of a wife is higher or more
discerning than her husband’s, and that a husband should be obedient to his
wife for the sake of conjugial love. Abraham’s idea in his own external mind is
to think that Ishmael is his son, and so he is disinclined to listen to his
wife when she tells him to get rid of him. Sarah’s more interior perception can
see that Ishmael is not the one, that Isaac will be the inheritor, and that
leaving Ishmael to hang around will threaten Isaac’s God given mission. If
Abraham is going to advance to his inner rational state he must disregard his
own inclination and external reasoning, and submit to his wife’s more interior
perception and spiritual understanding which she has from the Lord. This
exchange in the Old Testament represents the Doctrine of the Wife, which is
summarized by the Divine commandment to husbands: “Hearken unto her voice.”
And behold
Isaac was laughing with Rebekah his woman. That this signifies that Divine good
was present in Divine truth, or that Divine good was adjoined to Divine truth,
is evident from the representation of Isaac, as being the Divine good of the
Lord's rational (n. 3012, 3194, 3210); from the signification of
"laughing," as being the love or affection of truth (n. 2072, 2216);
and from the representation of Rebekah, as being the Divine truth of the
Lord's rational (n. 3012, 3013, 3077). Hence it is evident that "Isaac
laughing with Rebekah his woman" signifies that Divine good was present
with Divine truth. (AC 3392) (italics added for
emphasis)
The reason
for the apparent contradictions as to the intelligence and wisdom of men and
women has to do with the fact that the internal and external mind is in an
inverse relationship. Intelligence of the external kind is a lower form of
intelligence, less spiritual and celestial, in comparison to the intelligence
of the interior mind. Conjugial union is the joining of the internal mind in
which the intelligence of women is more internal than the intelligence of men.
This allows men to escape their inherited lower state of masculine independence
and evolve into a new higher state of conjoint dependence. This is the angelic state
of life.
A sermon by
Rev. Geoffrey H. Howard titled "The Transformation of a Man into a Husband
and a Woman into a Wife through Marriage" appeared in New Church Life,
June 2001 issue, pages 243-248. We will use this article to illustrate some
doctrinal issues in relation to the Doctrine of the Wife. The literal of the
Writings can lead to misconceptions unless contextualized in relation to the
Doctrine of the Wife or other passages in the Writings. In other words,
articulating the Doctrine of the Wife and applying it to interpret the literal
of the Writings avoids the heresy of believing that men’s intelligence in
forensics and in spiritual instruction is superior to women due to men's
wisdom, which women cannot attain. It is difficult to avoid this heresy without
the Doctrine of the Wife.
It is
customary to make a statement of denial in relation to the heresy of the
superiority of men over women. Rev. Howard states it this way:
It is
important to take teachings such as these in their proper context. Some have
read into such teachings in Conjugial Love the erroneous notion that masculine
virtues are extolled over those of the feminine. Nothing could be further from
the truth
(NCL,
June 2001, p.244).
Every
“We say
that masculinity cannot be converted into femininity, nor
femininity into masculinity, and that after death a male is consequently still
a male, and a female still a female. (…) The difference essentially consists in
this, that the inmost quality in masculinity is love, and its veil wisdom, or
in other words, it is love veiled over with wisdom, while the inmost quality in
femininity is that same wisdom, the wisdom of masculinity, and its veil the
love resulting from it. This second love, however, is a feminine love, and it
is given by the Lord to a wife through the wisdom of her husband, whereas that
first love is a masculine love, which is a love of becoming wise, and it is
given by the Lord to a husband according to his reception of wisdom.” (CL 32)
Rev. Howard
concludes:
From this
we can see that the reception of masculine wisdom depends upon a man's
willingness to look to the Lord and shun as sins against the Lord the evils
that may tempt him. Thus we can see that a man does not automatically receive
wisdom because he is a male. He receives it only by honoring the Lord through
living according to His commandments.
Following The Lord's Commandments Through One’s Wife
How does a
man live according to the Lord's commandments? One might think at first that
the husband has that power from the Lord independently of his wife. Can a
husband live according to the Lord's commandments from his efforts apart from
the wife or can he do this only through his wife? Could it be that the husband
cannot follow the Lord's commandments unless he does so through his wife? How
else can the mind of each grow into reciprocal form that can fit into a unity
of mind or spirit? This conjoint growth process was described above as a
four-step interaction repeatedly made with each other on a daily living basis.
What would happen if the heart said to the lungs, “I’m superior,” while the
lungs, speaking in unison, retort, “We are superior.” One angel in heaven is
made of a husband and wife interacting continuously as a conjoint unity.
Swedenborg was witnessed this phenomenon while speaking to an angel husband in
heaven who had invited him in to discuss the subject of wisdom:
I saw
inside that the building was divided into two sections, and yet the two were
still one. It was divided into two
sections by a transparent partition, but it looked like one room because of the
partition's transparency, which was like the transparency of the purest
crystal. I asked why it was arranged like that.
The
receptionist said, "I am not alone. My wife is with me, and though we are
two, yet we are not two but one flesh."
To which I
replied, "I know you are wise, but what does a wise man or wisdom have to
do with a woman?"
At this,
with some feeling of annoyance, the receptionist's expression changed, and he
stretched out his hand, and suddenly, then, other wise men were present from
the neighboring buildings. To them he said with amusement, "Our visitor
here says he wants to know what a wise man or wisdom has to do with a
woman!"
They all
laughed at this and said, "What is a wise man or wisdom apart from a woman
or apart from love? A wife is the love of a wise man's wisdom." (CL 56)
Rev. Howard
recognizes that women’s wisdom is more interior, therefore, higher, than a
man’s:
Feminine
wisdom, or perception, does not easily lend itself to description because it is
of a more interior nature than is the wisdom given to a man (...) They are
entirely different in quality and nature, yet complementary to each other.
(NCL,
June 2001, p.245)
From the
perspective of the Doctrine of the Wife it is not enough to say
(a) that masculine and feminine wisdom are different; and
(b) that they are complementary.
A
conclusion must follow:
(c)
Therefore the husband should elevate the wife's judgment above his own.
Another way
of saying this is Rule 1 for conjugial husbands, as discussed frequently
throughout this volume:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that
husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
(See
Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
Without
this conclusion, the literal of the Writings may be misinterpreted. The
husband's wisdom may indeed be elevated even to the highest heaven, but he
cannot appropriate it to himself. His wisdom falls back quickly to the level of
his love or affections, which are in hell for all who are unregenerate. The
Writings make this comparison referring to the natural man before he is
regenerated:
He is also
like an adulterer who hides a harlot in a room below, and in turn ascends to
the highest story of his house, and there in the presence of his wife talks
wisely with visitors about chastity, and again steals away from the company and
satiates his lust with the harlot below (TCR 590).
This
comparison is said about every husband whose internal spiritual mind has not
yet been opened through regeneration. Husbands can elevate their intellect into
doctrinal things of the Writings while they are studying and applying
themselves piously. Then they descend from the lofty heights of studies and
interact with their wife, abusing them mentally, discounting their intellect,
holding the wife's judgment as nothing in comparison to their own, and other
such indignities, which they think nothing of. And this is done repeatedly,
daily. There is no regeneration possible for them so long as this pattern in
their life continues to rule their interactions with the wife.
Rev. Howard
cautions that the wife’s love of her husband’s wisdom does not mean that she
also loves his evils:
No wife can
love a proud or conceited husband. (...) The attraction he feels [as he is drawn
to her by love] has the effect of subduing his proprial pride. (...) Through
the influence of her love his mind becomes elevated and aspires to a new
idealism that no longer looks inward. He feels an incentive to live in a manner
worthy of her love and respect. Through her influence he is withdrawn from his
fallen proprium. By living a principled life of service to his wife, family and
others, he begins to receive a degree of wisdom which will draw the affections
of his wife
(NCL,
June 2001, p.247).
The husband
must make progress in his regeneration or character reformation, for without
this there is no wisdom in him that the wife can love. According to the
Doctrine of the Wife the only way a husband can improve his wisdom is by
elevating his wife's judgment above his own. This is “living a principled life
of service to his wife.” Unless this is the case the husband is drawn away by
his proprium or inborn egotism and cleaves to his idols rather than his wife.
It’s not enough to respect the wife and consult her in matters of importance,
though these external rituals are required. If there is no commitment to the
Doctrine of the Wife the husband can be drawn away by his masculine proprium
and decide to exercise a veto power over the “joint” decision making process.
Consulting
the wife in matters of importance still allows the husband to override her
point of view or desire in the matter. And he will exercise this power when he
is tempted, which means he cannot loose himself, cannot change his character,
cannot regenerate, cannot form a union with the wife, cannot become an angel.
But if he
commits to the Doctrine of the Wife he cannot permit himself to exercise veto
power or override his wife’s affections in any matter whenever he is inclined
to do so for whatever reason or rationale. He can only compel himself to be
obedient to the Heavenly Doctrine for this is the Lord’s Two Great Commandments
rolled into one. By loving the wife above himself, the
husband loves his closest neighbor, and he thereby simultaneously loves the
Lord because this love for his wife and her love for him is conjugial love, the
love in which angels are in heaven. The Writings teach that it is the Lord’s
most passionate desire that He be able to create as many angel couples as we let
Him, for this is the purpose for which He created the universe and maintains it
in order to perpetuity.
It is
believed that if the husband applies himself to following the commandments, his
wisdom will grow from the Lord, and the wife will be able to love his wisdom
even more, and thus the couple is conjoined. But this contains a dubious
assumption, namely, that the husband gains wisdom from the Lord apart from his
wife, through his own independent effort and striving to follow the Lord's
commandments, and then the wife can love this new wisdom in him. But the
Writings specify that a husband receives new wisdom from the Lord only in
proportion to his love. Striving to improve in itself is not sufficient for the
husband to receive more interior truths from the Lord. This is because the
striving is from his proprium. His only salvation is to love the wife's
judgment and perception above his own, to love the wife's wisdom above his own.
Then his love will be elevated because her wisdom is more interior than his.
This higher love can now receive more interior wisdom from the Lord. This is
the genuine new wisdom, which the wife takes into her inmost and from which she
brings out a feminine veil of love that covers her.
There are,
in consequence, two loves in a man, one of which is the love of growing wise,
which comes first, and the second of which is the love of wisdom, which comes
afterwards. But if this second love continues on in a man, it is an evil love,
and is called conceit or love of his own intelligence.
It will be established later that to keep this love from destroying man, it was
provided from creation that this love be taken from him and transferred into
woman, so that it might become conjugial love, which makes him whole again. (CL 88).
8. Feminine
Love Within Which Is
Masculine Wisdom
It is this
feminine love within which is masculine wisdom that makes the atmosphere of
heaven in which the angels live in blissful splendor to eternity. Couples here
on earth in which the husband is committed to the Doctrine of the Wife and
lives it, are internally in this heavenly atmosphere. Their conjoint spirit is
actually in heaven.
I have
often asked myself this question: What does it mean when the wives of
There are
two types of explanations. One type takes the position that Doctrine is for
men, primarily, especially formulating Doctrine and interpreting the Writings as
Doctrine. The other type takes up the position that Doctrine is separate from
priesthood. For instance, an evil or insincere priest can perform sacraments
but can’t create genuine doctrine (AC 9180). An evil man can create only false
doctrine because he creates it from his self-intelligence. He is no motivated
to understand the Writings for the sake of truth, but for the sake of dominion.
Therefore the Lord can reveal not a single genuine Doctrine to his mind. He
will teach only false and adulterated doctrine.
This proves
that being a priest and performing the sacraments for the community does not
necessarily go with being good and, therefore, having truth in the doctrine
they formulate.
It stands
to reason therefore that a priest has no special authority to create Doctrine
for the Church. The Writings say that priests ought to teach the Word in
sermons and classes (NJHD 315). It doesn’t say that that what they therefore
teach will be genuine Doctrine. This depends entirely on his state of
regeneration (LIFE 39). A priest has no special inspiration to formulate
genuine Doctrine when he is in evil, for falsity goes with evil, not truth.
Since we never know whether an individual is internally in good or evil (CL
523), we cannot automatically assume that any priest’s teachings of doctrine
are genuine or false—it could be either. If we merely accepted what a priest
teaches out of authority for his position, we are precipitated into persuasive
faith, and this is deadly for it leads to no belief at all when we arrive in
the afterlife with that kind of faith (NJHD 117)
So priests
ought to encourage people to study the Writings and accumulate their Doctrine
from it. This is the only protection the sheep have from the wolves—their own
reformation, that is, their acquisition of knowledge from the Writings and the
use of this Doctrine in their daily willing and thinking. This is the only way
to develop genuine Doctrine for each
He who
loves the ends also loves the means (AE 1144). Since the end in view is
reformation and regeneration through forming Doctrine and living it, therefore
teaching how to form Doctrine is the priest’s primary work of saving souls. Primary, because no one is saved by sacraments, but only by regeneration
(LJP 216). And no one is regenerated without willing and thinking
Doctrine from one’s as-of self comprehension (AC 47, 233, 1712, 2877, 5664,
10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). Clearly therefore,
the
I come back
to the question I posed above: Why are we not seeing more doctrinal activity
and involvement by women in the
The
priesthood may discourage or prevent women from becoming priests in the full
sense. This is one issue. But the priesthood may not discourage women from
actively being interested in doctrine and contributing to it. Regardless of the
Church’s official position on the issue of “women priests,” the priesthood must
always teach men and women how to formulate Doctrine for themselves out of the
Writings. They must teach that there is no power of salvation in the sacraments
they provide or in the doctrinal things they teach. They must teach that
the only method of salvation is reformation and regeneration, and that this can
be performed only by means of Doctrine each individual forms from the Writings
in their own individual mind.
The
attitude that Doctrine is primarily for men is present in all religions. Where
I grew up in an Orthodox Jewish family it was required that all boys start
attending “cheder” (religious classes) at age four or five. But the girls were kept
with the mothers learning domestic duties. This is clearly detrimental in the
light of the preceding discussion. Other religions, both Western and Eastern,
similarly keep women from active involvement with formulating Doctrine for the
Church. There is thus a long standing generational bias to deny women what they
need for their own salvation. What can motivate this except the hatred for
conjugial love? This is a hatred all men have from inheritance and confirmation
in life (see the following Sections below).
Of course
we know from the Writings that the Lord protects all innocent people from being
denied spiritual freedom. The women who are deprived by the dragons (AR 565) of
their doctrinal rights and privileges are protected inwardly by the Lord so that
their spiritual choices in life are protected. Outwardly, that is, socially and
politically, women can be denied knowledge and legitimacy of forming Doctrine,
and this results in great harm to the community. But inwardly, every woman is
given by the Lord other secret means of reformation and regeneration. Women
receive special perception from the Lord so that they have Doctrine written in
their hearts, like we all do when we become angels in heaven (HH 25). This
inward perception gives them wisdom, or the ability to perceive that a
spiritual proposition is true or false. Men do not have this perception from
the Lord so they must study as-of self and struggle with learning the Writings
and applying it to their willing and thinking. In this less direct and more
elaborated way, men too can form Doctrine.
The
And we are
to remember this: that the level of life of the highest angels of the entire
human race, now and into the future, is as nothing in comparison to the Lord’s
Life, His Love and Wisdom (HH 273).
9. The Role
Of The Wife
In The Husband's Wisdom
One of the
many biological facts revealed in the Writings is that the spiritual
constitution of men and women is inside out and outside in relative to each
other. This organic difference results in reciprocal roles for unition. Unition
would not be possible unless the spiritual organic parts of men and women were
reciprocal. Wherever the word "spiritual" is used, you can also think
"mental" because the mind is the spirit-body that continues its
immortal life in the spiritual world. At birth, the mind or spirit is born
along with the physical body and is formed through social and natural
experiences on earth.
Man was
created by God so as to have his internal in the spiritual world and his
external in the natural world. Thus he was created a denizen of either world in
order that the spiritual, which is heavenly, should be planted in the natural,
which is worldly, just as a seed is planted in the ground, and he might thus become
steadfast and enduring to eternity. (TCR 14)
We are thus
dual citizens, the physical body on earth and the mind or spirit in the
spiritual world.
Man was
created by God so as to have his internal in the spiritual world and his
external in the natural world. Thus he was created a denizen of either world in
order that the spiritual, which is heavenly, should be planted in the natural,
which is worldly, just as a seed is planted in the ground, and he might thus
become steadfast and enduring to eternity. (TCR 14)
When the
spirit is disconnected from the physical body at the time of passing on, the
spirit is then visible in its full form and beauty. Swedenborg has encountered
thousands of individuals in heaven and they all are in the “flower of youth and
beauty” or around seventeen or eighteen. The spirit-body is organically and
functionally far superior to the physical body, even the body of a top fashion
model or athlete that our society admires. Men and women appear in their ideal
form in heaven, but in hell they appear deformed.
In order to
be soul mates in heaven a wife and a husband must develop a character and
personality other than what each was born with on earth. One of the startling
revelations in the Writings is that the character of every child contains the
cumulative evils of all its ancestors. It is also taught that no one goes to
hell for the evils of another. We inherit the tendency and preference towards
innumerable evils attached to egotism and irrationality (CL 202). But
simultaneously we also inherit the power to oppose our evil tendencies and to
reject the false philosophies within which these evils are immersed. The Lord
in regeneration gives us this power. First, the Lord makes spiritual truths
available to us in our external mind through education and instruction. Second,
he gives us the power to live up to these truths, as we are tempted over and
over again in daily living. As we struggle with our temptations and win
victories over them, the Lord is able to open up our internal spiritual mind,
which is in heaven. This internal mind then descends into the external mind
where we become conscious of it. This is our tangible reward.
The process
by which husbands are regenerated is not the same as what happens with single
men. The wife plays a required role. This makes sense since the couple’s life
in heaven is only through a conjoint mind. This must be developed on earth
because regeneration is possible only while we are in the physical body. Once
the spirit-body is liberated, its life then continues such as it developed
while tied to the physical body. There is no “changing your mind” after you
pass on. A regenerating couple on earth must therefore evolve and develop a
conjoint mind through daily interactions. This is why it is required that the
wife be involved in the husband’s regeneration. The wife’s role in the
husband’s regeneration is determined by the biological necessity of their
respective spiritual form. The Doctrine of the Wife specifies the kind of
interactions that correspond to this form.
It has now
been revealed that husbands are born conjugial unwillingnesses and feel the
urge to rebel, to resist, to protest, to complain, and to withdraw. But the
wife, strengthened by the knowledge of spiritual truth and reality, will remind
him thus:
My husband,
you know you cannot save yourself by yourself. You know the Lord has appointed
me to lead you to heaven. To assist me in this task, the Lord gives me
perception to see your inmost inclinations or affections, and the Lord gives me
wisdom to defeat the pack of delusions and lies that you've surrounded yourself
with and to which you continue to hold on. You have no choice. I'm waiting. The
Lord and heaven are waiting. Get with it. Give up your pride and arrogance and
listen to me. Do as I ask. Etc.
This is the
Doctrine of the Wife--talking sense into men that they may enjoy eternal
conjugial bliss. It contains the idea that marriage is social, legal, and
religious on the outside but spiritual on the inside. The external aspects of marriage
may be called by the usual word "conjugal" but the internal spiritual
aspects are called "conjugial." The extra “i” represents the
elevation of the natural marriage into spiritual marriage. The Lord intends
that we first form, build, develop the outside conjugal aspects of marriage and
then, when this is solidly established, that we form, build, and develop the
inside conjugial aspects.
Unity is to
be achieved in both outside and inside aspects. Then the marriage is truly
conjugial, blessed, and eternal. But the fact is that
external unity can be achieved and then never go on to internal unity.
Spiritually this is a disaster. Husband and wife are then on their own in
regeneration, like single men and women. This is important to remember when a
woman feels discouragement because her husband resists the work it takes to
achieve inner unity. All is not lost for her, and though it's not possible to
know this fully in advance, she can trust that the Lord will provide her with
her true soul mate in the afterlife. A wife ceaselessly and courageously
continues her efforts to unite herself to her husband, externally and
internally, despite all his efforts to discourage and resist her. By doing this
she makes it possible for the Lord to unconsciously prepare her conjugial mind
from within in such a way that she in the afterlife can conjoin with a suitable
man also prepared for her by the Lord.
10. Inventory Of Confessions For Husbands
To shun evils is to
do goods (AE 803)
The
Writings teach that “All of us are born with a tendency to every kind of evil,
and if we do not partially remove evils by repentance, we remain subject to
them, and if so cannot be saved.” (TCR 520) The Writings also teach "A
mere verbal confession that one is a sinner is not repentance." (TCR 516). In order to repent and reform we must become
conscious of each evil trait in our character in a specific way. This is the
purpose of the inventory of evils inspired by the Doctrine of the Wife. The
inventory is something we need to keep track of for ourselves. A public
confession to anyone but one’s wife is not a requirement for repentance and
regeneration. But because we don’t want to publicly discuss our evils of daily
life is not a reason for not becoming aware of them ourselves in an objective
way by self-witnessing and monitoring our moment by moment willing and thinking
all day long. This kind of self-awareness takes practice to perform effectively
just like any other discipline or task that you learn to do well. First, can
you see yourself making this kind of confession to the Lord, to yourself, and
to your spouse?
I husband,
will circle the items that constitute my confession, which is that I have been
engaging in these lowly acts on a regular basis and that now I wish to stop, by
first, recognizing my brutishness, and second, holding it in aversion for the
sake of the Lord and a heavenly life with my wife. One way I can show my honest
intention is to print out the list with the circled items and to ask my wife to
help me fill in what I have left out.
I also
realize that it's not up to me to tell her to fill out a similar list for
herself because our situations are not parallel, and for me to ask her to do
that would be insulting her and thus contrary to the intent of this confession.
I also
dedicate myself to maintaining these lists up to date so that I will write all
those additional items that do not yet appear, but of which I'm guilty and
become aware of.
In all this
I realize that though I must do this as-of self, the power for my success is
solely the Lord’s. I acknowledge that the removal of these evils is not
something I do on my own and alone. Angles and spirits are present and
intimately involved in every detail. The Lord manages and supervises this
process in its every detail.
Now take a
look at the list. It can be considered a behavioral Inventory of Confessions
for husbands. You might like to adjust the style and particular content to fit
your actuality. These items are for the most part the things I have noticed in
myself, after much help and insistence from my wife. A few were added from
other husbands who wrote to me. I numbered them for easy reference but I have
not tried to order them or group them—though that might be a beneficial task as
it increases consciousness of the inner affections that maintain these outward
behaviors of conjugial evil, both inherited and acquired.
1. I
upset her by raising a topic at the wrong time
2. In
our conversations, I initiate most of the topics
3. When
we talk, I pursue my perspective on the topic rather than hers
4. When
I get upset in our exchanges, I raise my voice and put on a stern face
5. When
I'm under stress, I don't mind taking it out on her
6. When
I'm very angry, my body assumes a threatening posture towards her
7. When
I feel that she is driving me nuts, I stay away from her
8. When
I think she is not paying attention, I punish her by making her feel bad
9. When
I feel nagged, I think it's OK not to answer her
10. If
in a discussion, I feel that she is getting irrational, I put her down in my
mind
11. If
I get annoyed at her, I don't mind showing it
12. I
refuse to take responsibility for her bad feelings
13. I
criticize her when I feel she deserves it
14. I
hate it when she pouts because of something insignificant I did to her
15. I
hate it the way she keeps bugging me when I won't do something her way
16. Sometimes
I think she is a bit lazy
17. I
think she tends to deliberately exaggerate our difficulties
18. I
often think it's unfair the way she mostly wants things her way
19. When
things get impossible with her, I just walk off
20. When
she leaves or comes home, she wants me to make a big fuss over her, and I hate
it
21. When
she has PMS, I try to stay out of her way
22. I
don't mind embarrassing her in public if she gets on my nerves
23. When
I drive, I don't tolerate her telling me what to do
24. I
put my loyalty for our children ahead of my loyalty for her
25. I
show my impatience when I am shopping with her and thinking she is taking too
long
26. When
I get mad at her, I stay mad longer than a few minutes
27. When
I make her cry, I wait more than five minutes to come to her rescue
28. I
let weeks go by without making her dance with me even though I know she wants
to
29. I
let days go by without giving her a shoulder and neck rub even though she would
want one
30. I
let a whole day go by without giving her at least one kiss or hug
31. I
often change topics without satisfying her
32. I
frequently conveniently forget something I agreed to do
33. I
neglect her and exploit her in many different ways
34. I
betray her in my mind by ridiculing her, belittling her, saying No to her
35. I
try to keep certain information about myself from her so she won't be able to
get to me by using it to pressure or fight me
36. I
retaliate when she's just doing her conjugial job pointing to my resistances
and lack of cooperation in conjugial unity
37. I
flatulate at my pleasure without consideration for her feelings or
sensibilities
38. I
belch aloud in her presence without excusing myself, acting like a savage
39. I
expose her to my bad breath
40. I
expose her to my body’s unpleasant acrid odors from sweating and not washing
41. I
often present my scratchy unshaven face and irritate her skin and her sense of
grace
42. I
touch her with dirty finger nails
43. I
let my nose and ear hair grow until they show despite her protest
44. I
walk around the house in dirty shorts and sneakers, not caring about what it
looks to her
45. I
leave my clothes lying around for her to pick up
46. I
never pick up after her, expecting her to do that
47. I
don't launder my dirty clothes and often don't bother thanking her for doing it
for me
48. I
am mostly oblivious to washing dirty dishes, leaving the kitchen chores to her
49. I
expect her to take care of the bills and then criticize her if she makes a
mistake or is late
50. I
don't call her when I'm late coming home, ignoring her fears and insecurity
51. I
neglect to express my appreciation for a thousand little kindnesses she does
for me all day long
52. I
don't mind staring at other women when she is with me, and I don't hide it from
her (or else: and I hide from her).
53. I
stare at other women when she is not with me, without trying to remind myself
that my wife wouldn’t like that
54. I'm
not upset if I forget to do something I promised her, and I don't try to own up
to my mistake and make her feel better about it
55. I
fail to give her dependable and regular sexual satisfaction due to my
incompetence
56. I
fail to massage her body every day, though she likes it, needs it, and feels it
as closeness
57. I
sometimes criticize her body parts
58. I
fail to play with her hair, though she told me many
times she likes that and makes her feel secure
59. I
often fail to comment appropriately on her appearance, clothes, jewelry
60. I
sometimes criticize her looks
61. I
make her wait when she calls me to the meal table
62. I
make her late when she's anxious to get there on time
63. I
often enter a room where she is and do not first acknowledge her presence
64. I
often show insufficient enthusiasm for her proposals, hints, plans
65. I
lie to her when I decide it's OK to do that
66. I
let her believe a lie sometimes to avoid an argument
67. I
don't laugh at her jokes or sense of humor
68. I
have not bothered to learn how to walk with her without bumping into her
69. I
have not bothered to learn how to drive without making her anxious about my
driving
70. I
have not bothered to learn how to find something at home without asking her
(e.g., a light bulb, a battery, a clean bed sheet, a tax record, etc.)
71. I
have not bothered to learn how to buy her tampons without having to ask her the
size
72. I
have not bothered to remember what her doctor's name is and what medicines she
takes
73. I
don't feel responsible for running out of things at house parties--that's her
problem
74. I
don't feel responsible for getting us to a social engagement on time
75. I
don't feel responsible for keeping up appropriate social appearances and do all
the expected rituals fro family and friends, like birthdays etc.--that's her
job
76. I
don't feel responsible for planning and preparing for a party we throw--that's
her job
77. I
don't feel responsible for taking care of Christmas gifts--that's her job
78. I
don't feel responsible for taking the cats to the vets for their shots, but I
complain when she doesn't
79. I
make her responsible for overdrawing our checking account
80. I
don't feel responsible for taking our clothes to the cleaners
81. I
sometimes forget our anniversary date
82. I
often discount what she says and perceives, even though I know from the
Doctrine of the Wife that she speaks and perceives from the Lord
83. I
raise my voice above hers to force her to relinquish her demand
84. I
am task-involved in discussing something with her, and pay little attention to
how she feels during the discussion, simply ignoring her frustration and
suffering
85. I
often ignore where a discussion was left off, so she gets the feeling it's
hopeless because there is no cumulative progress--so she has to start from
scratch each time
86. I
often forget things that are important to her that she doesn't want me to
forget. Further, I don't act like my forgetting is a big deal and I act like
she is a stickler or nag because she insists on remembering that stuff
87. I
don't try to find out what she thinks about many things because I don't make
the effort to find out, so that she is left with the injurious feeling that I
don't care about her and that I'm not interested in her
88. I
raise my voice at her and intimidate her physically (like throwing something,
banging on something, or grabbing her with force, etc.) so that she feels fear
from me as if I were her father or a stranger
89. I
criticize her, which makes her feel that I do not like her
90. I
don't always help her when she needs help, thus letting her figure it out for
herself--which gives her the feeling of not having a friend
91. I
have sex with her without making up for my prior insults or quarrels--this
makes her feel like a slut, but I act like it's not a big deal
92. I
use my male prerogatives to satisfy myself in sex without wanting to know or
making the effort to find out, whether she has been satisfied
93. I
rebel against her desire to know my every move, and don't tell her details
about my schedule, so she has to wonder where I am and when I'm coming home.
And worse: sometimes lying about what I do or covering it up because I want to
retain my independence, or because I decided it's not her role to keep tabs on
my comings and goings.
94. I
resent her for wanting to micro-manage my time or activities and, going along
with that resentment instead of fighting it as illegitimate and evil
95. I
involve myself with activities that exclude her automatically so she feels like
her connection to me is broken, e.g., having a long conversation with an
ex-girl friend; going to a bar with the boys and spending time there, instead
of coming home to her; spending a lot of time at some hobby in which she cannot
participate or in which I don't want her to participate; etc. etc.
96. I
embarrass her in public, or to her friends or company, or to the children;
making a scene and spoiling the decorum and mood she wants to set or maintain
97. I
keep away from her at parties and gatherings, sticking with the men, avoiding
the women's talk as disinteresting; or, if participating, then taking over and
dominating the conversation or focus
98. I
don't mind letting a whole day go by without complementing her or her
appearance or her work; taking her for granted, and making her feel that I'm
taking her for granted instead of treating her like I think she is special,
which is what she wants and needs
99. I
relentlessly pursue my topic, insisting on my opinion or judgment, suffocating
her with my dominating power and rigidity and selfishness
100. Sometimes
I act like I don't want to have sex when she hints at it
101. I
refuse to give her veto power over what I want to wear, then embarrassing her
by what I wear as if that decision is mine entirely
102. I
act disinterested in her aesthetic side so she ends up feeling neglected and
needing friends who will give her attention
103. I
leave wet towels in the bathroom for her to pick up, like she were my slave,
and then not acknowledging her charitable deed on my behalf
104. I
jab my fingers into my wife's ribs, and claim I'm just tickling, when really
it's to make her flinch and struggle to pull away—a kind of obnoxious game
violence
105. I
procrastinate in self-destructive ways (e.g. not getting forms filled out by a
deadline, not taking care of needed repairs), then act like she's responsible
for the remedies to the situation (like rushing to the post office for me, or
making the phone calls to service people)
106. (add your own)
You can see
from the inventory of evils that the items are pretty universal and apply to
every husband. You can also see that they are very specific and recur many
times in the course of a single day. You can also see that there are thousands
more that have not been written down. Many additional items are mentioned or
described in Section 1 above and in the sections on disciplines below.
11. Six-Step
Process For Removing
Our Evils
The
sequence of our moment to moment behaviors is made of three parallel or
“simultaneous” levels integrated into a smooth flow: the motive, the reasoning,
and the body’s actions. The motive is affective and resides in the will. The
reasoning is cognitive and resides in the understanding. The body’s actions is sensorimotor and physical. Every single
sensorimotor act is the effect, while the cause is the reasoning that is
selected and driven by the motive. This threefold integration of the natural
mind is like the threefold integration of the body, which corresponds to it:
the heart and the circulation of the blood (affective; the will); the lungs and
the respiratory system (cognitive; the understanding); and, the nervous system
(sensory and motor activities). Clearly then, as we perform one of the
behaviors on the inventory of evils, it is a threefold integration that allows
us to perform it: our anti-conjugial motive or affection selects and drives the
negative thinking about our wife, and the two acting to trigger the outward
nasty, hurtful, and insensitive behavior. When we think of this integration we
cannot dismiss these behaviors as relatively unimportant, due to family or
cultural habits, and other such excuses.
Many
believe that man is purified from evils by merely believing what the Church
teaches; some, that man is purified by doing good; others, that it is by
knowing, speaking and teaching such things as pertain to the Church; others, by
reading the Word and books of piety; others, by attending churches, listening
to sermons, and especially by approaching the Holy Supper; others, by
renouncing the world and devoting oneself to piety; and others, by confessing
oneself guilty of sins of all kinds; and so on.
Nevertheless,
man is in no wise purified by all these works unless he examines himself,
recognizes his sins, acknowledges them, condemns himself for them and does the
work of repentance by desisting from them; and unless he does all these things
as of himself but still in acknowledgment from the heart that he does them from
the Lord.
[2] Until
he does these things, the actions just mentioned avail nothing, for they are
merit-seeking or hypocritical; and those who do them appear in heaven in the
sight of angels like beautiful courtesans giving forth the offensive odor of
their defilement; or like ill-favored women made to appear handsome by the
application of paint; or like clowns and actors wearing masks on the stage; or
like apes in human clothing.
When,
however, men have removed their evils then the actions mentioned above are acts
of their love, and they appear as beautiful men in heaven in the sight of
angels and as their associates and companions. (DP 121)
Note well
what the Lord is telling us here. Our evils cannot be removed unless we go
through this sequence:
Examining the sequence of our daily willing
and thinking
Identifying the evil behaviors at all three
levels—what we will as our affections, what we think in our understanding, and
what we execute in our outward acts
Acknowledging that if we don’t stop doing them,
we go to hell (“condemning” oneself)
Repenting so that we can rationally see that
they are selfish and evil
Desisting so that we no longer do them—in our
willing, in our understanding, and in our outward acts
Knowing that the power to desist is from
the Lord but that nevertheless we must struggle as-of self to bring it about
This
six-step process must consciously be practiced as a daily and hourly
discipline. If this seems exaggerated to you, ask yourself, what then is going
to get rid of these evils in you? Are you relying on what the first paragraph
says in the quoted passage above? Which lists these things:
Being
purified from evils by merely believing what the Church teaches
Being
purified by doing good things (as long as the good things outweigh the bad
things)
Being
purified by knowing, speaking and teaching things that pertain to the Church
Being
purified by reading the Writings and books of piety
Being
purified by worship in the Church (listening to sermons and approaching the
Holy Supper)
Being
purified by confessing oneself guilty of sins of all kinds
These are
not going to get rid of your evils or neutralize them somehow. Only cooperation
as-of self in getting rid of them will achieve the process, and without
undergoing this process there can be no salvation and life in heaven. There are
no exceptions! And how can the process go on if you don’t begin it and get it going?
And is it not a most dangerous evil to postpone the beginning of it? Clearly
then, you must make the decision to begin today, now at this hour!
He who
leads a life of piety, and not at the same time a life of charity, does not
worship God. It is true, he thinks of God, yet he does not think from God, but
from himself; for he constantly thinks of himself, and not at all of the neighbour (NJHD 124)
Believing
that you do not need to rid yourself of these evils in relation to your wife is
called here a life of piety that is not at the same time in a life of charity.
For charity to your neighbor refers to conjugial love to your wife, since this
is the love that is to be placed above all other loves (xx).
God is
loved when a man lives according to His commandments; and the neighbour is
loved, when a man performs uses. In order therefore that a man may receive the
life of heaven it is absolutely necessary that he live in the world, and engage
in its various duties and vocations. (NJHD 126)
I did not
struggle with my daily evils for many years. When my wife brought them forward
I told her no one is perfect. When she asked me whether I think I can go to
heaven with them, I replied that eventually I will get rid of them. When she
pointed out that I do not know how long I have on this earth, I became anxious,
but I still wanted to postpone getting rid of them. It was too much work, too
soon, I felt. I can take it little by little, with more comfort, so the process
doesn’t interfere with my pious activities studying the Writings and writing
about it. But the passage above, and many others like it, should have told me
that I do not love the Lord unless I obey His Commandments, and He commanded
that we as-of self get rid of our evils so that we may be regenerated. And
neither did I love my wife who is my neighbor in the house because I was
willing to subject her to continued hurt from my evils. And neither did I love
uses because loving self, willing to live with one’s evil affections, is not a
use but contrary to use.
Hereditary
evil derives its origin from everyone's parents and parents' parents,
or from grandparents and ancestors successively. Every evil which they have
acquired by actual life, even so that by frequent use or habit it has become
like a nature, is derived into the children, and becomes hereditary to them,
together with that which had been implanted in the parents from grandparents
and ancestors. The hereditary evil from the father is more inward, and the
hereditary evil from the mother is more outward. The former cannot be easily
rooted out, but the latter can. When man is being regenerated, the hereditary
evil enrooted from his nearest parents is plucked up by the roots; but with
those who are not being regenerated, or who cannot be regenerated, it remains.
(AC 4317)
We cannot
be regenerated in the abstract or in the general. Only in the
particular. And if we are regenerated in the particular, then we will
have been regenerated in the general. Every particular evil in our affections
is a spiritual fiber that lives on forever, unless rooted out by the Lord. And
this rooting out or purification process is performed by the Lord—but only to
the extent we cooperate, that is, we make lists of our evils, monitor their
occurrence, and make a conscious effort to desist from it because it is
contrary to the heavenly mind we must have to live in heaven. We have numerous
such evils that we inherit and many more that we add prior to our reformation
when we lead life in spiritual unconsciousness. Since there are these many
thousands of evil affections we hold on to and enjoy, it takes years and years
to go through them one by one. Clearly we cannot afford to postpone the process
for one more day. And it is begun, we cannot afford to waste a single day in
which we do not identify a bunch of them, and struggle consciously against
them, thanking the Lord for supplying the power. And He is always willing, if
only we are.
But what
hereditary evil is, few know; it is believed to consist in doing evil; but it
consists in willing and hence thinking evil; hereditary evil being in the will
itself and in the thought thence derived; and being the very conatus or
endeavor that is therein, and which adjoins itself even when the man is doing
what is good. It is known by the delight that is felt when evil befalls
another. This root lies deeply hidden, for the very inward form that receives
from heaven (that is, through heaven from the Lord) what is good and true, is
depraved, and so to speak, distorted; so that when good and truth flow in from
the Lord, they are either reflected, or perverted, or suffocated. (AC 4317:[5])
Once again
you can see from this passage that doing evil is the resultant effect of
willing evil and the thinking derived from it. And willing evil is a love of
the infernal or lust. It is something delightful to us. And note this very
important statement: that the evil love in our willing “adjoins itself” to the
good we are also willing, and therefore, corrupts it. The good we are doing,
and the uses we are engaged in, are not genuine good because the evil we are
also permitting in us, remains and corrupts
unconsciously. Therefore we have no choice but to monitor our willing and
thinking hour by hour and to go through the sex-step process outlined above.
12. The
Marriage Of Good And
Truth
Regeneration is the psychobiological
activity of the Lord in our mind by which He conjoins His good to the truth we
take in from His Word. When good is conjoined to truth in our mind, it is called a “marriage,”
as in this passage:
There is,
however, a marriage of good and truth in the cause, and there is a marriage of
good and truth from the cause in the effect. The marriage of good and truth in
the cause is a marriage of the will and the understanding, that is, of love and
wisdom.
There is
such a marriage in everything that a man wills and thinks, and in his
consequent conclusions and purposes.
This
marriage enters into the effect and, indeed, produces it; but in the process
good and truth appear to be distinct, because what is simultaneous then
produces what is successive. For instance, when a man wills and thinks about
being fed, clothed, having a dwelling place, conducting any business,
performing any work, or engaging in social intercourse, he first wills and
thinks about these things, or forms his conclusions and purposes,
simultaneously; but when he has reduced into effects what he has willed and
thought, the one follows after the other; nevertheless, they continue to make
one in his will and thought.
In these
effects, uses pertain to love or good, while the means employed to furnish the
uses pertain to the understanding or to truth. Anyone may confirm these general
truths by particular illustrations, provided he clearly perceives what has
relation to the good of love and what to the truth of wisdom, and also how
these are related in the cause and also in the effect. (DP 12)
This says
that the threefold integration of our behavior is called by the Lord a
“marriage.” The outward act involving the physical body is nothing but an
automatic effect of the marriage of our will with the understanding. In other
words, every act, at both the macro and micro levels, is the child or offspring
of our willing and thinking. This is the marriage the Lord is talking about to
us. The Lord’s intent is to create a celestial marriage in our mind in order
that we may become angels—for this is His utmost desire, as He often reveals it
in all Three Testaments of His Word. But in the Third Testament of His Second
Coming He can at last reveal the rational principles by which He governs the
universe and our regeneration. And so it has been amply shown in many places in
the Writings that affections in our will remain forever because they are
spiritual fibers, and as such immortal and indestructible. And yet the Lord has
provided that He can uproot them, lay them aside so they can have no influence
on the new will He gives us. But this requires our active and willing
cooperation, and He has explained in the Writings what this cooperation must
consist of.
We have
been discussing this cooperation process throughout this book, and especially
in Volume 2. The Lord calls it a marriage between the good He gives us in our
new will and the truth we acquire in our understanding from His Word, in the
First Education of the letter, and then in the Second Education of the spirit,
when we undergo reformation in adult life (AE 803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]). Now
we can understand this process at first in the general only, and then after
regeneration is on its way, we can understand it in a particular way. And this
particular understanding refers to the thousands of acts of willing and
thinking we do in an hour and in a day. These particular acts must be witnessed
and condemned, ad discussed above. The self-witnessing of our willing and
thinking is our reformation and our regeneration, therefore our enlightenment
and salvation, but only when put up the inner struggle to inhibit them, to
desist from willing and thinking all the old things that must be uprooted by
the Lord. And He does it to the extent that we cooperate willingly and
effectively, that is, sincerely.
The
inventory of evils in our willing and thinking can only be identified and built
up when we monitor our willing and thinking all day long, hour by hour. In the
Lord’s providence, to which I can testify, it is a task that is most arduous at
first, but after just a few years of practice, or three to four thousand days,
it no longer feels arduous, and then we bask in the bliss of understanding the
Lord’s Word that His Yoke is easy (xx). And we continue our struggle until the
end, but we have our love in it.
… the Lord continually flows in with man with good, and in
good with truth; but man either receives or does not receive; if he receives,
it is well with him; but if he does not receive, it is ill with him. If when he
does not receive he feels some anxiety (here meant by "distress of
soul"), there is hope that be may be reformed; but if he has no feeling of
anxiety the hope vanishes.
With every
man there are two spirits from hell, and two angels from heaven; for man being
born in sins cannot possibly live unless on one side he communicates with hell,
and on the other with heaven; all his life is thence.
When man is
grown up and begins to rule himself from himself, that is, when he seems to
himself to will and to act from his own judgment, and to think and to conclude
concerning the things of faith from his own understanding, if he then betakes
himself to evils, the two spirits from hell draw near, and the two angels from
heaven withdraw a little; but if he betakes himself to good, the two angels
from heaven draw near, and the two spirits from hell are removed.
[2] If
therefore when a man betakes himself to evils, as is the case with many in
youth, he feels any anxiety when he reflects upon his having done what is evil,
it is a sign that he will still receive influx through the angels from heaven,
and it is also a sign that he will afterward suffer himself to be reformed; but
if when he reflects upon his having done what is evil, he has no anxious
feeling, it is a sign that he is no longer willing to receive influx through
the angels from heaven, and it is also a sign that he will not afterward suffer
himself to be reformed.
… for with those who are then in anxiety there is an internal
acknowledgment of evil, which when recalled by the Lord becomes confession, and
finally repentance. (AC 5470)
You can
clearly see from this passage that reformation occurs only in adult life, and
only if all along, in our youth, we allowed our conscience to survive. For there are many who squelch, subdue, and eventually silence all
conscience within them from the Lord. This is the anxiety we feel when
we observe our evil willing and thinking. The anxiety is the consequence of
allowing the angels to stay near us in our decisions and reflections. In this
way we avoid giving ourselves totally over to the evil spirits and creating a
permanent association with hell that later remains. The passage also shows that reformation in
adult life depends on “the things of faith in the understanding,” which means,
the Doctrine we take up from the literal of the Writings. This Doctrine in the
understanding then is made spiritual by the Lord who opens our spiritual mind
to the extent that we cooperate. The passage also shows how important it is to
maintain a good education and social atmosphere for the youth who are in our
charge. This means teaching them about how to resist the nonduality of culture
and science in their social environment.
It is known
that faith from love is the essential means of salvation, and thus is the
principle of the doctrine of the church; but since it is important to know how
a man can be in such enlightenment as to learn the truths that must constitute
his faith and in such affection as to do the goods that must constitute his
love, and thus can know whether his faith is a belief in truth and his love a
love of good, this shall be told in its proper order, as follows: (AE 803)
This
passage (more is quoted below) outlines the details of how we can cooperate in
our regeneration by the Lord, for without this cooperation the Lord cannot
regenerate. Note that we cannot be regenerated without knowing spiritual truths
by enlightenment from the Lord. We cannot obtain spiritual truths from self or
from the literal of the Writings, as shown in several places above. Spiritual
truths only come to us by means of enlightenment from the Lord when we read the
Writings and apply its Doctrine to our willing and thinking. Note also that we
cannot cooperate in our regeneration by means of the spiritual truths we
acquire but only by means of the affections we have for them. When we have an
affection or love for the spiritual truths that we receive by enlightenment,
then and only then, do we have the motive “to do the goods that must constitute
our love.”
13. Shunning
Sins, Doing Good, And Performing
Uses
How do we
know whether the affection we have for doing good is
genuine, that is from the Lord and not from self? For both are possible! We can
have a love for doing good to others and for
performing uses that is from self, not from the Lord. That is, we can love to
do good and perform uses for selfish reasons such as
reputation, gain, or merit. This is not from the Lord, hence its is not doing good actually, and it is not performing uses actually. Hence
the Lord is giving us methods by which to know ourselves, whether we do good and perform uses form self or from Him. Several are
outlined in the continuation of the passage (AE 803). The numbers are in the
original.
(1) Let him
read the Word every day, one or two chapters, and learn from a master and from
preachings the dogmas of his religion … and that the Lord is the God of heaven
and earth, … that the Word is holy, that there is a
heaven and a hell, and that there is a life after death. (AE 803)
For the
(2) Let him
learn from the Word, from a master, and from preachings, what works are sins,
and that they are especially adulteries, thefts, murders, false witness, and
the others mentioned in the Decalogue; likewise that lascivious and obscene
thoughts are also adulteries, that frauds and illicit gains are also thefts,
that hatred and revenge are also murders, and that lies and blasphemies are
also false witness; and so on. Let him learn all these things from childhood to
youth. (AE 803)
This
specifies what we are to learn in our First Education about the literal of the
Writings: namely: which of our loves and deeds are sins. They include outward
acts (“thefts, murders, false witness”), acts of thinking something
(“lascivious and obscene thoughts”), and acts of loving something (“hatred and
revenge”). Sins are therefore in our willing, in our thinking, and in our
outward acts.
(3) When
man begins to think for himself, which is the case after he has grown up, it
must be to him the first and chief thing to refrain from doing evils for the
reason that they are sins against the Word, thus against God, and for the
reason that if he does them he will gain, not life eternal, but hell; and
afterwards as he grows up and becomes old he must shun them as damned, and must
turn away from them in thought and intention. (AE 803)
Note that
we don’t begin to think from ourself until young adulthood when we are
considered “grown up”—in today’s times and culture this means in our late
twenties and early thirties. Even if you are born in the
But in
order to so refrain from them and shun and turn away from them, he must pray to
the Lord for help. The sins he must refrain from and must shun and turn away
from are chiefly adulteries, frauds, illicit gains, hatreds, revenges, lies,
blasphemies, and elation of mind. (AE 803)
Note that
we must acknowledge that it is the Lord who is withholding us from evils but
that we are to struggle as-of self to do this. The Lord cannot remove our evils
unless we struggle as-of self to do this. Note also that these evils are in our
behaviors and acts at all three levels, outward and inward. To will evil is an
act. To think something obscene is an act. These inward acts are just as
necessary to remove as the outward act. Generally in society, from a social and
legal point of view, outward acts are more important to regulate, while inward
acts are left to one’s freedom. But spiritually, the reverse is true. Inward
acts are more important because the rule over the outward acts. “Hatreds” are
acts of hating; blasphemies can be outward or inward acts, or both. Adulteries
can be merely cognitive acts, like enjoying watching obscene movies or enjoying
daydreaming about sexual acts that are forbidden or scandalous when performed
outwardly. Illicit gains include the thought of cheating but not doing it out
of fear of repercussions. Note that it is
not the occurrence of these thoughts or feelings that is
the sin, but our approving of them, that is, not shunning them.
(4) So far
as man detests these evils because they are opposed to the Word, and thence
opposed to God, so far there is granted him communication with the Lord, and conjunction is effected with heaven. (AE 803)
Conjunction
with heaven and the Lord opens our spiritual mind by which we are regenerated.
Note that this conjunction or communication only takes place when we detest our
evils of willing and thinking. And further, to detest them because they are
against the Writings, therefore against the Lord Himself.
For the
Lord enters, and with the Lord heaven enters, as sins are removed; since these
and their falsities are the sole hindrances. The reason is because man has been
placed in the midst between heaven and hell, wherefore hell acts from the one
side, and heaven from the other; therefore so far as evils that are from hell
are removed, so far goods from heaven enter; for the Lord says:
Behold I
stand at the door and knock; if anyone hear and open the door, I will come in
to him (Rev. 3:20).
(AE 803)
The Lord
desires nothing more than to grant us conjunction with Himself
and heaven. But it says that sins hinder. He cannot enter until He removes our
sins, and He cannot remove our sins until we allow it, for this is given to us
by creation. Without this freedom we have of not allowing the Lord to remove
our sins, we could never be regenerated and saved (xx). And so the Lord
guarantees that we retain this spiritual freedom forever. Our spiritual freedom
is achieved not from ourselves, but solely from being in balance between good
forces from the angels and evil forces from the devils with which everyone is
associated by the Lord so that they may have freedom of choice. And when sins
are removed, “goods from heaven enter.” This refers to our new willing and
thinking after reformation.
But if man
refrains from doing these evils for any other reason than because they are
sins, and are opposed to the Word and because thence to God, no conjunction of
heaven with him is effected, because his refraining is from self, and not from
the Lord. The Lord is in the Word, even so that He is called the Word (John
1:1-4), because the Word is from Him; consequently the conjunction of heaven
with the man of the church is by means of the Word, as may be seen in the work
on Heaven and Hell ... (AE 803)
By means of
the Writings we have conjunction with the Lord because He is His Own Word and
Divine Truth. This conjunction is only in proportion to sins being removed by
means of the spiritual truths of doctrine from the Writings. If we only have
the literal truths of the Writings, the Lord cannot enter, cannot remove sins,
cannot regenerate us and save us. And the
Lord gives us the spiritual truths within the letter to the extent that we
detest our sins because they are contrary to the literal of the Writings.
(5) So far, then, as man detests these sins so far good
affections enter. Then so far as he detests adulteries so far chastity enters;
so far as he detests frauds and unlawful gains so far sincerity and justice
enter; so far as he detests hatred and revenge so far charity enters; so far as
he detests lies and blasphemies so far truth enters; and so far as he detests
elation of mind so far humility before God and love of the neighbor as oneself
enter; and so on. From this it follows that to shun evils is to do goods. (AE
803)
14. To Detest Evils And Sins
To shun the
evils within our willing and thinking is to detest them. To detest our evils is
to do good from the Lord. To do good from the Lord is to be saved. Everything about our regeneration depends
therefore on our willingness to detest our evils. This willingness is at
first extremely difficult to muster because we love our sins and we are
unwilling to detest them. Hence we experience spiritual temptations which are
states of despair and inward suffering and dread. The inward pain is felt on
account of our realization that we must give up our delights of sin because
they are contrary to heaven. It appears to us in those states that we are going
to lose all the value of living that makes it worthwhile. But after the
temptation process is over, the Lord gives us inward peace (xx) and the
strength to detest our sins. Nor can this be accomplished generally, once and
for all initiation or baptism, but gradually over time, after many many
temptations in everyday situations over and over again, each time with a slight
but significant variation. This is what we must be willing to go through.
(6) So far
as a man is in these good affections he is led by the Lord and not by self; and
so far as he acts from them so far he does what is good, because he does this
from the Lord and not from self; and then he acts from chastity, from sincerity
and justice, from charity, from truth, in humility before God; and from these
no one can act from self. (AE 803)
Our goal in
regeneration is to lose self and gain the Lord! And when we have gained the
Lord we have immeasurable improved our condition of life, our happiness, our
fulfillment, as well as the happiness of others who benefit from our love of
uses, and especially our wife, for the greatest of all uses and all happinesses
is the use of conjugial union. Such are we from creation, that we complete
ourselves as perfect human beings in our heaven, in the conjugial union, while
all else is meager in comparison to this human state.
(7) The
spiritual affections that are granted by the Lord to him who is in them and who
acts from them, are the affection of knowing and understanding the truths and
goods of heaven and the church, together with the affection of willing and
doing them; also the affection of combating with zeal against falsities and
evils and dispersing them, both with himself and with others. From this man has
faith and love, and from this he has intelligence and wisdom. (AE 803)
Where do we
get intelligence and wisdom, the two things men long for and in which they feel
their fullness of being? This passage tells us that it is from faith and love
that we get intelligence and wisdom. If we pursue intelligence and wisdom from
our self-intelligence and self-motivation, we only get stupidity and
foolishness, no matter how learned and famous we become in our generation. But
if we pursue faith and love, then we get intelligence and wisdom. And what is
faith and love that we are to pursue? How do we pursue them? It says in the
passage that we get faith and love by doing these two things: (1) “combating
with zeal” the many evil affections in our will; (2)
acquiring Doctrine from the Writings in our understanding (“truths and goods of
heaven”) to guide and direct our combats against our evil affections. From
these two actions we have faith and love that gives us the intelligence and
wisdom that is the fullness of our being as a man.
(8) Thus
and in no other way is man reformed; and so far as he knows and believes
truths, and wills and does them, so far is he regenerated, and from natural
becomes spiritual. The like is true of his faith and his love. (AE 803)
The faith
and love we have from our willingness to undergo reformation and regeneration,
is a spiritual faith and a spiritual love. These two things cannot exist in the
natural mind. The spiritual mind must first be opened by the Lord so that
spiritual faith and love can exist within us, within our natural mind that is
otherwise empty and infernal. We become spiritual when our spiritual mind is
opened by the Lord. This is a psychobiological process of growing spiritual
fibers that coil in a special way and form our spiritual-body which we need to
live in heaven (xx). There is no other way that the Lord has provided for our
regeneration. He uproots the old evil affections in proportion to how much new
spiritual fiber we allow Him to grow in us (xx). If the Lord should implant
spiritual fibers at a greater rate than He uproots the old depraved fibers,
what do you think would happen? We would suffer the agony of death and be
destroyed forever. Therefore it says that we are regenerated “so far as we know
and believe truths.” To “know truths” refers to our study of the Writings and
extracting Doctrine for ourselves. To “believe truths” refers to compelling
ourselves in our willing and thinking all day long, to conform to the Doctrine
in our understanding.
[3] If
evils have not been removed because they are sins nothing that a man thinks,
speaks, wills, and does, is good or true before God, however it may appear as
if good and true before the world. The reason is that they are not from the
Lord but from man, since it is the love of the man and of the world from which
they are, and which is in them. Most people at this day believe that they will
come into heaven if they have faith, live piously, and do goods; and yet they
do not turn away from evils because they are sins, consequently they either do
them or believe them to be allowable; and those who believe them to be
allowable do them when opportunity is given. (AE 803)
This
passage refers to a most dangerous and pernicious nonduality that can destroy
our regeneration and spiritual life. It is the equity model of good and evil.
It is the belief that our good traits can outweigh our bad traits, and since no
one is perfect, everybody has flaws which must hen be
balanced as against their good. In relationships this belief expresses itself
variously as “I am the way I am. Don’t try to change me. Take me as I am if you
love me. Ignore my weaknesses, focus on my strengths. Nobody is perfect. Who
can be the one to throw the first stone. Who is
blameless? Who doesn’t have faults? It’s human. Etc.”
(See the discussion on Unconditional love in Chapter 6, Section 7.) But this
and many other passages teach the contrary, that there is no compromise or
equity or balance between good and evil loves. They are in a discrete duality.
Every single evil affection must be uprooted and not a single one can be taken with us
into heaven. This can only be done when
we shun our evils as sins. Why? Because, as it says, if we shun them for
reasons of reputation, gain, or merit we shun them from self, and not from the
Lord, all things from self are infernal (xx). But when we shun our evil
affections and delights because they are sins, we shun them from the Lord since
sin is an idea that is connected directly to the Lord: we sin against Him when
we love our evil delights! And this makes His goods unavailable to us, as a
result of which we enter the life of misery from which we can never escape to
eternity.
But let
them know that their faith is not faith, that their pious things are not pious,
and that their goods are not goods; for they flow from the impurities that lie
inwardly concealed with man; and externals derive everything that they are from
internals. For the Lord says:
Thou blind
Pharisee, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the
outside may become clean also (Matt.
There is no
equity in spiritual things, no continuum between evil and good, no compromise, but only absolute truth and absolute good
distinct from all evil and falsity. Religious worship and piety are nothing
when we fail to undergo reformation and then regeneration. The “inside of the
cup” refers to our evil delights and their many false beliefs. The “outside of
the cup” refers to our religious and pious behaviors, thoughts, and prayers. It
says that these are not pious and not good unless we are sincerely struggling
against our evil delights and false beliefs. “Sincerely” struggling against
them means acquiring effective techniques to combat them rather than leave it
up to circumstance, hope, promise, or wish fulfillment. It requires a conscious
focus and discipline on a daily and hourly basis to be effective and real. Do
you not agree? The shunning of our evil affections as sins against the Lord
must be a forefront activity for our day, every day, don’t you think? How else
can we get rid of each particular and specific delight and belief or idea?
There is no general forgiveness and dispensation or propitiation of our evil
attachments (xx). It’s a matter of a psychobiological gardening—the uprooting
of each bad plant and the implanting of a new plant in its place. No other
method has been provided by the Lord from creation! This He repeats to us man
times in all Three Testaments.
From this
it can now be seen that if a man were able to fulfill all things of the law, if
he should give much to the poor, if he should do good to the fatherless and the
widow, and if he should also give bread to the hungry and drink to the thirsty,
take in the strangers, clothe the naked, visit the sick, and go to them that
are bound in prison, if he should earnestly preach the Gospel, convert the
Gentiles, frequent temples, listen devoutly to preachings, observe the
sacrament of the Supper often every year, spend his time in prayer, and other
things; and his internal has not been purified from hatred and revenge, from
craftiness and malice, from insincerity and injustice, from the filthy delight
of adultery, from the love of self and the consequent love of rule, and the
pride of self-intelligence, from contempt of others in comparison with oneself,
and from the other evils and their falsities; still all these works would be
hypocritical and from the man himself, and not from the Lord. (AE 803)
The Lord
makes a wonderfully helpful list of our evil delights—the spiritual fibers He
must uproot for us, if only we Let Him. The first grouping is about religious,
pious, humanitarian, and “spiritual” behaviors that are internally hypocritical
because they depend and live from equity theory, or the cherished idea that our
good traits and deeds outweigh our bad, so that we don’t have to struggle so
hard against some of the evil delights we are unwilling to give up. This is the
first grouping of our evil affections and thoughts that lead to damnation. The
second grouping refers to the evil affections that we are unwilling to give up,
that we are willing to keep: “hatred and revenge, craftiness and malice,
insincerity and injustice, the filthy delight of adultery, the love of self and
the consequent love of rule, and the pride of self-intelligence, from contempt
of others in comparison with oneself.” Keep a list of these things and use it
to organize the inventory of evils discussed above. These are the chief enemies
of reformation and regeneration.
And yet
these same works, when the internal has been purified, are all good, because
they are from the Lord with man, and since the man is in the faith and in the
love of doing these works he will do them as a matter of course. (AE 803)
There is no
merit in doing good from the Lord. Doing good is to detest our evil affections, as discussed above.
But note that it is not possible to do good except from the Lord, which for the
This has
been proved to me by a thousand examples in the spiritual world. I have there
heard that it has been granted to many to recall the actions of their life in
the world, and to enumerate the goods they had done; but when their internal
was opened it was found to be full of every evil and the falsity therefrom; and
it was then disclosed to them that the goods they had enumerated had been done
from self, because for the sake of self and the world, and that they were full
of evils from their interiors; and on this account they appeared either as if
scorched with fire, or as if sooty. (AE 803)
The Lord
has provided through the Writings all that the
Chapter 2, Section 4
A husband possesses
elements taken from his wife, which increase his ability to receive love and
wisdom (CL 199)
4. The surrendered wife vs. the surrendered husband
The
Doctrine of the Wife is a religious and spiritual discipline for husbands. The
wife has no actual power to control her husband. The main principle in the
doctrine of the Wife is Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that
husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
(See
Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
The
initiative here is in the husband. It his voluntary decision to learn a new
thing: to learn to love acting from his wife more than from himself. What
happens when he does not take this initiative and actually opposes it
ferociously? After all, this is the most common scenario with husbands: they
oppose their own reformation, and by this, they oppose their wife’s desires and
requests regarding his conduct and personality. If the wife then continues to
take the initiative, the husband knocks her down, and the marriage turns into a
hell. This is the theme of a new movement among wives started by Laura Doyle
through her book known as “The
Surrendered Wife.”
Here are
excerpts from the Introduction of the book:
Why Would a Woman Surrender?
When I was newly married at 22, I had no idea I would ever
call myself a surrendered wife. At that time, I would have been repulsed by the
whole idea.
(…)
At first I treated him with respect and kindness because I
was so impressed with him. Then, as his imperfections grew more familiar and
glaring, I began correcting him as a way of trying to help him improve. From my
point of view, if he would just be more ambitious at work, more romantic at
home and clean up after himself, everything would be fine. I told him as much.
Needless to say, he didn't respond well to this. In fact,
the more I tried to control him, the more strained things got. While my
intentions were good, I was clearly on the road to marital hell.
(…)
None of us feels good about
ourselves when we're nagging, critical or controlling. I certainly didn't. The
tone of my voice alone would make me cringe with self-recrimination. Through
surrendering, you will find the courage to gradually stop indulging in these
unpleasant behaviors and replace them with dignified ones.
(…)
There was no single moment when the
surrendered light bulb went off in my head. Instead, I changed little by
little. I experimented, first by keeping my mouth shut and sometimes even my
eyes when John drove. When we arrived in one piece, I decided that I would
always trust him behind the wheel, no matter how strong my urge to control.
(…)
We were intimate again. Instead of
keeping a running list of complaints about how childish and irresponsible he
was, I felt genuine gratitude and affection for John. We were sharing our
responsibilities without blame or resentment. Instead of bickering all the
time, we were laughing together, holding hands, dancing in the kitchen and
enjoying an electrifying closeness that we hadn't had for years.
(…)
The basic principles of a surrendered wife are that she:
Relinquishes inappropriate control of her husband
Respects her husband's thinking
Receives his gifts graciously and expresses gratitude for
him
Expresses what she wants without trying to control him
(…)
If you're a wife who feels
overwhelmed, lonely and responsible for everything, this book is perfect for
you. If you can admit that you frequently or sometimes control, nag, or
criticize your husband, then it is up to you and you alone to take the actions
described here to restore intimacy to your marriage and dignity and peace to yourself.
… The point of my journey was to give up controlling behavior, and to look
inward instead of outward.
(…)
1. Do not surrender to a man who is physically abusive to
you.
2. Do not surrender to a man who is physically abusive to
your children
3. Do not surrender to a man who has an active addiction.
4. Do not surrender to a man who is chronically unfaithful.
(…)
If your husband doesn't fall into
one of the categories above, then you are married to one of the good guys. Not
a perfect husband, but one who is capable of loving you and cherishing you one
who has the potential to help you feel great about yourself and your marriage.
(…)
I know what I'm suggesting is difficult. I know it doesn't
seem fair. It didn't seem fair to me that I had to work so hard to change while
my husband continued to sit around watching television, but your husband will
have to make big changes too. … He will have to listen to his own inner voice
of conviction instead of relying on yours to tell him when he's not doing
something right. He will need to use his own mind to figure out what's best for
his family rather than reluctantly carrying out your subtle or not-so-subtle
orders.
(Laura Doyle. “The Surrendered Wife: A Practical Guide to
finding Intimacy, Passion and Peace with a Man” 2001 on the Web at
www.surrenderedwife.com/chapterone.html Accessed June 2002)
This new
philosophy is being acclaimed by many wives whose marriage became more
satisfactory when they stopped trying to “control” their husbands and learned
to act like a “surrendered wife.” The lesson I see in this is that a man has
more power to make his wife miserable than the other way round. The
“surrendered” wife gives up two things. One is her participation in negative
interactions that are used by the husband to create a hell for her. This is no
doubt a good thing for her and for their relationship. The other thing she
gives up is her participation in initiating his reformation. This is not a good
thing.
The wife
has an essential role to play in her husband reformation. He is dependent on
his wife for undergoing reformation and he is rarely able to do it on his own.
The examples Laura Doyle gives about her “control” attempts include all the
things that he should be listening to her, but refuses. It is his refusal,
attitude, and punishing reaction that turns her
interventions into “nagging” and “controlling.” She is only courageously
insisting that he change his irresponsible, bad behaviors that are abusive,
rejecting, and non-cooperative. The wife’s motive is not “control.” This is a
basic misunderstanding of the surrendered wife proposal. This notion assumes
that what the wife is trying to do is to control her husband. This is a
misconception that men have foisted on women so that the men won’t have to
change. Anytime a man thinks that his wife is “nagging” him or trying to
“control” him, it is most likely not so. This may happen, but it is rare with
the vast majority of cases. Wives are more honest and more skilled in
relationships. They are given perception about what conduct in their husbands
is injurious to their intimacy and love.
This
motivation ought to be honored by the husband. And when it is, the husband does
not feel “nagged” or “controlled” but helped along the way of reformation and
regeneration. If the “surrendered wife” surrenders her role in his reformation,
the external marriage may improve, as Doyle testifies, and others who have
followed her. But the inner union is made impossible. For that union to
develop, the husband must accept his wife’s role in changing him.
1. The Surrendered Husband is The Ideal Elevated Man
Men are
unwilling to give up the male prerogatives or perks that society bestows upon
them as a right and privilege for being a male man. I received this idea from
childhood culture. My parents said it was better to have boys than girls. Boys
carry the name and the blood line. Boys grow up to be men with power, fame, and
riches. Girls were nice, but they were weak and you had to spend more effort at
keeping them unspoiled so a man would want them. They also cost you a lot of
money when you give them in marriage. Boys can protect you and take care of
you. Yes, boys are trouble sometimes, but you have to give them a lot of slack.
Etc. As a result, I was instructed by my parents before marrying that I be sure
to “train” my bride right from the start to be subservient to me. She has to
follow your word. A man must wear the pants and make the decisions. She has to
serve you, cook for you, wash your clothes, look after you properly, like you
deserve. And you have to let her know you’re expecting her to look fresh and
nice for your, when you come home, anytime. She shouldn’t let herself go. You
have to demand respect from her. Then she’ll love you and she’ll be happy, and
she’ll take care of your children too. How astonishing to me now, as I list
these factual realities of cultural gender arrogance.
The truth
in the Writings has now been revealed: It is the opposite! It is the feminine
perception and the feminine intelligence and the feminine beauty that is
superior relative to men (xx). And so it is the feminization of marriage that
sanctifies it and makes it a spiritual and whole (see Chapter 9 Section 1
above). One might wonder: Does this mean that it is the man who has to
surrender to the wife—THE SURRENDERED HUSBAND? This would not be far from the
truth, as long as you make sure to include the idea that it is another way of
saying Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first and only rule is that husbands
are to learn to love acting from the wife, more than from self.
(See
Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
This is
what makes the difference between subjugation, servitude, and dominion. Only
love can fend away these inherited enemies. Rule 1 doesn’t say “Husbands must
obey their wives.” Neither does it say “Husbands should listen to their wives.”
It says: “Husbands are to love acting from the wife more than from self.”
If a
husband behaves in a way that is pleasing to his wife, he is pleasing her, even
if internally he feels emotional conflict and stress. This is the first step of
learning to live by Rule 1. It is loving your wife
more than loving yourself. This type of love is called celestial, and is
the highest human love (xx). If this love is elevated by the husband to the
highest position in his hierarchy of loves, he will behave to please her, and
this always means firstly, to avoid displeasing her. Eventually he will no
longer feel the inner conflict of rebellion when he is pleasing her. He will
then act to please her, and love it. From then on he lives by Rule 1, the
celestial life on earth. He is conjoined as one from within with his wife. Of
the two, they make a one—the conjoint self (see Chapter 9 Section 4
below).
This is the “surrendered husband”—the
elevated true man of creation, who loves the feminine sphere of his wife’s
affections more than the masculine sphere of his own affections.
The
“surrendered wife” is the man’s exploitation of the woman, as a result of which
he fails to attain his true self, the self into whose perfection he was created.
A man can reach his perfection in the state of being an elevated husband, which
is defined as a husband who has learned to love acting from his wife’s
affections more than from his own. The man is then a celestial mind, conjoint
to the wife from within. Her life is his life because affections is nothing
else than life itself in human beings. He then acts from his wife within him.
Note how different this is from acting from the wife from without!
If a man
acts from his wife from without, he is not a man but a zombie under the woman’s
control. She thereby becomes infernal, and he as well, because only voluntary
submission can create the zombie relationship with someone. The Lord guarantees
freedom of choice moment by moment for every individual in the universe. If a
husband becomes a zombie, he maintains himself in that state voluntarily, by
his own falsifications of truth or reality. This is acting from the wife from
without—she is standing there, with her hands on the hips, staring him down,
and giving him orders to prove to herself that she can dominate him. This is an
infernal couple. But it’s altogether
different when the husband acts from the wife from within.
The expression
“to act from the wife from within” means that the husband loves her affections
and appropriates them to himself. Now the wife’s affections are within him. Now
he acts from the wife’s affections from within. This kind of action is possible only from love of her affections.
And what is loved, one chooses freely and voluntarily, in freedom (xx).
2. The Self-Entrapment of Male Intelligence
I agree on
this with Laura Doyle and the many enthusiasts she seems to have among married
women: It’s far better to be treated in a civilized way by one’s husband than
in an abusive way.
What a
relief these women feel when their man suddenly stops the heavy handed
punishing treatments and abuses, verbal and physical, social and psychological.
But he still holds it on top of his wife’s head, like a sword of Damocles,
ready to fall on her head if she should step over a line that he defines.
This is an
external improvement, like what the citizens experience when a dictator of a
country passes away and is replaced by a democracy. Yes, being treated with due
human rights is a start. Look what it took for the man to stop making a hell
for his wife: Her surrender! He is now back with his
male privileges and prerogatives! She is now treated a little better, but at
what ultimate cost?
The wife’s
surrender in order to achieve peace, romance, and respect is similar to the
psychology and politics of blackmail, family style. The man says to his wife: “I
will stop abusing you and neglecting you if you turn yourself into a surrendered
wife.” And she has no choice but to accept, or else see no end to the abuse.
She has no recourse because the man she is tied to by external marriage bonds, has closed off the interior relationship between
them. Yet the interior marriage relationship is the wife’s life roots, the
wellspring of her happiness and fullness of being. This is why she is married:
To unite herself from within—feelings, thoughts, futures.
She is the genuine married partner while he is the bogus husband, one who does
not treat her lovingly, but tortures her instead. She feels like a lamb chained
to a wolf who at any moment he wishes, can pounce on her and annihilate her
lifeline.
The husband
sees himself adjoined to her in the
exterior physical and social domains. She sees herself conjoined to his interior psychological and emotional self, his
hopes and aspirations, his dreams and perfectionism, his intelligence and power
of reasoning. She loves all of these because they are his, and unites herself to them, which means, she takes these things within
herself as she takes his semen into her birth canal. But the husband in
contrast spews out his wife’s affections and walls himself off to be sure they
don’t get to him. He will not appropriate them. His wife’s affections are his
pet peeves, the bane of his marriage. It is on account of her affections that
he denigrates her, calling his wife a nag, the moment her affections touch him.
He acts like he wants to shake them off, like so many worms clinging to his
body. He hates conjugial love because he is born with hell within him.
And hell
hates nothing more fiercely an insanely than the idea of conjugial love. When
an infernal sees a an angel couple, and receive a
whiff of their conjugial sphere, they fly into a maniacal frenzy in an attempt
to tear apart and squash the couple. But as they approach nearer to the angel
couple, the infernals are seized with such anxiety and terror,
that they cast themselves back down into hell. This was witnessed by
Swedenborg in the spiritual world where the angel couple had descended (xx).
Such is the
husband’s inherited opposition to internal unity with his wife. Such an
internal unity with the wife REQUIRES that he love her affections!
But he
hates her affections and finds them obnoxious and unpleasant, grating and
nagging on his nerves. This hatred of her affections is what his lower outward
self expresses as abusive behavior, emotional coldness, uncaring, and
independent. She desires to tie him to her, for this is the internal unity. He
is revolted by the idea and makes him suffocate. He feels all the joy of his
life squeezed out of him when her affections touch him. He then feels like he’s
been burned and denigrated. He lashes out against this hated foe called his
wife’s affections. And she wonders “Why? And how can he be such a beast, such a
hypocrite, so self-destructive of his own elevated happiness, who he was created to be, whom I fell in love with? O, O
Where is my true husband who has been hijacked by this rude and gross man
pretending to be my husband. How long Lord?”
So now
that she is a surrendered wife she sees her inner striving for conjunction with
him closed off. The
door has shut!
How could
it be otherwise? He still wants her to
obey him! This is the death of the conjoint couple, the celestial ideal
creation that makes up one celestial angel. As long as the husband wants his
wife to obey him, the interior door is shut tight. She is excluded in an
absolute way. It feels to her like death. Now it’s her husband and God, forming
an alliance against her. She is the third person. First comes himself. Then comes his God. Then comes her. This
is the hierarchy in his mind, the idol he worships, or claims to, for
convenience and perks. By the wife “obeying him,” he means that he wants her to
act against her own wishes, her own best sense of what their relationship needs!
She is the expert who can see the relationship in a rational way since
conjugial love imparts the perception to the wife (xx). Her inner desire for
conjugial love is the source of her perception form the Lord. The Lord gives
her conjugial love, and then he can have it to the extent that he loves her
affections (xx). When he doesn’t love her affections, she is powerless like a
fish before a steamboat, or like a tomato on the road before a truck.
She feels
disjointed, rejected, abandoned for the sake of an external politically
motivated physical and social intimacy, but not a spiritual intimacy. What she
craves for is a spiritual unity, which means that he loves her affections, appropriates
them as his own, then acts from her, now within him. It’s a process that
continues and repeats itself endlessly so that she is in the fullness of
perfection of her being as a woman. A woman and a man are created reciprocals,
in general and in every particular so that they may be united into one conjoint
self.
Consider
the wife who got into an accident on her way over to visiting her husband in
the hospital, where he was waiting for a suitable donor to replace his worn out
heart. The take her to emergency and before she dies she wills her heart to her
husband. They perform the heart transplant and now he sits at home thinking
about her. He lives because her heart is
in him.
This story
is parallel to the conjugial union which is established when a man adopts the
Doctrine of the Wife and Rule 1 as a regeneration discipline. The wife dying
represents his hatred for her affections. The wife’s heart that is now transplanted
in him, represents her affections within him, because
he now loves them. That she is no longer around physically because she has
died, represents that she has resurrected in his mind as the conjugial wife.
Since this is a spiritual unity, it doesn’t appear in the outside natural
appearances.
Perhaps it
is necessary for a woman to become a “surrendered wife” for awhile, as a phase
in the marriage relationship. This may be imposed on her by the husband’s relationship blackmail mentioned above.
But if there is going to be a heavenly marriage with these two, the man must
become a “surrendered husband” as discussed above, since this is the state of
perfection into which a man is created. This is his “elevated state.” This is
the second phase, when the marriage turns into an inner unity between the
willing and thinking of the man and the willing and thinking of the woman.
It has been
revealed that a woman’s intelligence, wisdom, compassion, and grace is more abundant and inspired than a man’s (xx). A woman’s
intelligence is celestial or the highest and inmost of human possibility (xx).
A man’s intelligence is spiritual, which is a discrete degree below that of the
celestial. A woman’s intelligence can therefore be compared to the noonday sun
in the summer, while a man’s intelligence is like the light of the moon on a bright
night (xx).
Since this is the created reality,
it is rational and spiritual for man to love to act from his wife more than he
loves to act from himself.
This means
that the highest wisdom and intelligence of a man is that which he acquires for
himself from his wife’s affections which he has taken up within himself.
Affections
always determine the quality of wisdom and intelligence:
Such as the love is, such is the wisdom, consequently such
is the man. (DLW 362)
The
affections in the will are called “love.” The unregenerate husband acquires all
his wisdom and intelligence from his own affections. This intelligence opposes
itself to the intelligence of his wife, which she acquired from her affections.
In other words he loves himself and is sealed and isolated in himself. There is
no entry point. His wife receives from the Lord conjugial
love in her affections (xx). Her affections regarding him and the marriage are
therefore heavenly. She now has to wait. At some unpredictable point he will
decide to stop opposing and hating her heavenly affections. He undergoes
reformation by means of the Letter of the Writings which he applies to his
mind, bringing order out of disorder. Now he officially acknowledges to her
that he is struggling to learn to love her affections so that he could act from
her, rather than from himself. His Doctrine now confirms this process and he is
officially ready to participate, to submit, to die, for the sake of being
reborn an angel man.
He begins
regeneration. He fights against his nature. He has to simulate friendship and
enthusiasm as he painfully makes himself swallow her affections, like bitter
medicine. As he persists in this struggle, the Lord enlightens him. He builds
Spiritual Doctrine for himself whose power is so great that he sees himself a
new creation. He loves to love his wife’s affections! He has been healed. He is
now the elevated husband in training. He is happy. She is ecstatic. Soon they
are both ecstatic. Ecstasy becomes the bliss of their life here on earth. They
are forerunners of the new human race. The Alpha Couple.
The angels are in bliss for they actively participate in this awesome makeover.
Angels love nothing more than to assist in the birthing of conjugial love in a
couple on earth (xx).
Now the new
husband would not be able to support displeasing his wife, an idea that
devastates him as if all his happiness were suddenly gone. He would always act
from her affections, which means from her perceptions and perspectives, not his
own. In this way he can be conjoined to her form within and be happy and wise
to eternity.
But if the
wife surrenders to him, he is once again entrapped in his own male intelligence
and externality. It’s as if God had not created Eve as an
help mate to Adam.
The husband cannot save himself and
he cannot be saved by his wife, as intended by the Lord.
The future
of this man is sorry and miserable. This fate is not something she contributed
to. He is the one who forced her into the subservient status of a “surrendered
wife.” He forced her by systematically wearing her down over years of strenuous
effort. He made her feel scared, made her doubt herself, threatened her,
ignored her, did not value her judgment or opinion. So she had no choice but to
give up her most central role and task in life: To unite herself to her husband
and thus to make him happy and alive from herself, from what she has in herself
from the Lord. This is how the Lord intended it from the beginning and this is
what the Lord once again will re-create, as conjugial love is to return to this
earth through the Heavenly Doctrines (CL 130).
When the
man acts from his wife’s affections which he has internalized (Rule 1), her
life is in him like the organ transplant the husband received of his wife’s
heart. Her life is within him because her life is nothing else than her
affections (xx). His intelligence is now
reformed by the new affections in his will. Her higher affections, which
are from love and good, shape his new intelligence which are
from truth and faith. He receives truth from the Lord as before, but the truth
he now receives is far more interior and higher than before because he now has
his wife’s affections in the will, and these celestial affections conjoin themselves with a more interior truth form the Lord.
The more
the man loves his wife’s affections, the more he has got the celestial love
within him, and the more interiorly he can receive Divine Truth from the Lord.
When he has only his own affections in his will, the man also receives Divine
Truth, but in a more external way. The Lord longs to be conjoined with the man
more and more interiorly, as He is already conjoined to the woman through
conjugial love.
3. Who Is Going To Do The Bills?
Recall
again that “surrendered husband” doesn’t mean that she must now do the finances,
the military service, and the paycheck! Equity is not what it refers to (see
Chapter 9 Section 5). Rather, to be a surrendered husband means that he prefers
to act from her more than from himself. If she says, “Honey, would you explain
to me our finances?” he then strives to satisfy her. He explains as much as she
wants to know and tries to respond to her inner emotions and intentions so she
can feel that he is with her and for her. That’s what she wants, that’s what
the surrendered husband gives. Or, if she says, “Honey, I think we should do x,
not y” he then strives to value this request, to honor it, so that she feels
that he cares and he likes her. If she says to him,
Do this.
Don’t do that.
Do it this
way. Don’t do it that way.
Start now.
Stop now.
Keep up
with me.
Lower your
voice. Stop frowning.
And other
things like these,
and he
doesn’t do any of these things, what will happen?
What will
happen to her conjugial? She will be feeling a process of breaking off, a
growing incapacity to feel conjoined to him from within. This is because he
refuses to meet with her in the interior mind. That’s where they are
united, each giving something and living by what the other has. He—the
cognitive reception from heaven by means of her celestial affections which he
has internalized as-if his own. These are the interior truths that her conjugial
love craves from within to unite with. Her
inmost being or consciousness wants to unite to this Divine truth he receives
from the Lord by means of her affections in him.
This is
the achieving of the conjoint self. (See Chapter 9 Section 1 above.)
4. The Spiritual Physiology Of Marriage
One
expression of men’s distaste of the feminine sphere is the grouping of the
people at family gatherings. The men group together and bask in the masculine
sphere of each other. Their wives are forced therefore to group with each
other. They rather be together with their husbands,
but when they try, the husbands abuse them. So the only peace the women can
find is in each other’s sphere. This changes completely when a husband is
surrendered to his elevated creation, which is that he act
from his wife’s affections within him. When he does this, his intelligence
tells him that his wife wants to be together with him. He is entertained by her
feminine sphere far more than he cares for the masculine sphere. The feminine
sphere of his wife is now his life. This is because her life is in her
affections, and when he appropriate her affections to
himself, her life is now within him. Now he is a complete man, a true human, a
celestial mind, a conjugial husband.
The reason
husbands hate the affectional sphere of women is that it breathes out conjugial
unity, spiritual conjoining in willing and thinking. The man feels this as a
process of being shackled or restricted. He feels that the woman wants to
encroach on his territory of independence and freedom. He experiences the
mother, the sister, the girlfriend, or the wife as constant nagging to do this
or to do that, to be this way or that way, never to be who
you really feel like being. So men prefer the permissive company of other men who
respect the brotherhood rule of not trying to pressure or coerce one another.
The woman’s
sphere of affections is animated and domestic, because it is celestial. Domestic
uses are celestial while forensic uses such as business, science, and politics,
are spiritual and natural uses. The reason domestic uses are higher is because
they have to do with the home, with conjugial love, and with raising children.
These are celestial uses because the purpose of the earths in the universe is
to be a seminary for a heaven out of the human race (xx). Domestic uses are
therefore higher. Women are in charge of domestic uses because the affections
of women is celestial by birth, while the affections
of men is spiritual by birth. Celestial uses are far more elevated and human
than spiritual uses.
A man can
transcend his lower creation by conjoining with a wife who is created into a
higher creation. This is the meaning of the surrendered husband. He is surrendering the masculine idea that
his essence is masculine.
For in fact
the Lord has revealed the physiology of the masculine and feminine. The man as
a whole, and in his every part and particle, is love in his inmost, and this
love is covered over with truth, which forms his exterior. The reciprocal is
the case for what women are made of. Woman as a whole, and in her every part
and particle, is truth in her inmost, and this truth is covered over with love,
which forms her exterior.
You can
picture this to yourself as a diagram:
What an
amazing scientific revelation! How beneficial it would be for society if this
revelation were understood rationally. Since
man and woman are reciprocals of each other in general they must also be in particular,
which means not a single thing in a woman can be like a thing in a man, and
vice versa. (xx)
This can be
understood rationally if you think of marriage in a physiological sense, which
it is. Marriage is something sanctified and Divine since it is the vehicle of
the seminary for heaven, and this is the highest purpose or use for creation. Unity
is the conjoint operation of two things together so that the result is a new
conjoint object that is superior to the composing parts. Man as an individual
and woman as an individual are not human units, but only potential human units.
A human unit is the conjugial pair that from a distance is seen as one angel
(xx). The closest maximum unity is achieved between two distinct individuals.
Since not one thing in a man overlaps with one thing in a woman, they remain
most distinct. Therefore, when they unite, their unity will be more perfect
(xx).
Conjugial
unity is so perfect that it demands that not a single thing in a man can be
like a single thing in a woman. An exception would reduce the perfection.
This
applies to the body and the mind. Not a single fiber in a man can be like a
fiber in a woman. Not a single thought a man has can be like any thought a
woman has. Not a single affection a man has can be like an affection a woman
has.
You can see
the perfection of conjugial love when you consider from the Writings, what
happens when a man meets a woman and they fall in love and get married. The
woman takes within herself the man’s thinking style and reasoning process. This
is the same way as she takes his seed through her birth canal and gives it life
in her womb. That child born of her represents the husband’s intelligence in
the wife. She is now no longer an individual woman but a married woman, which
means that she has within her, his seed, his intelligence, his ideas, his
manner of thinking. She has a replica of her husband’s mind within herself so
that she always know what he is thinking!
Now it’s
the man’s turn. His job is to take his wife’s affections within himself just as
she took his cognitions within herself. As a conjoint self, the couple has
become just one. She acts from his
thinking within her and he acts from her affections within him.
Thus they
form a superior human being called the celestial mind or conjugial couple. This
is the plan of creation, now revealed!
Consider
the second diagram of the spiritual physiology of marriage:
The marriage on earth of a regenerating couple is called Phase 1, while
their marriage once they get to heaven, is called Phase 2. Conjunction in Phase
1 is external, also called spiritual. Internal conjunction in Phase 2 is
celestial. In the external conjunction while regenerating on earth, the husband’s
intelligence (“truth, wisdom) is conjoined to the wife’s affections (“love, good”). The wife’s affections are within him as a result of
loving them more than his own affections. This gives the surrendered husband a
new will from the wife. And it gives the conjugial wife a new understanding
from the husband. In this mode they grow more and more into a spiritual unity
while on earth. After they are reunited in heaven, they begin the conjunction
of Phase 2. Now they are both interior people having cast off whatever was not
part of their love and affections. The external truth and wisdom of the husband, are gone. The external love and good of the wife, are gone. What remains in the spirit-body of the angel
couple is the interior—his celestial love and her celestial truth. As these
unite, they become one angel more and more to eternity (xx).
Unity is
only possible between truth and good, which is the
same thing as saying, between wisdom and love (xx). This unity is called “the
marriage of good and truth” (xx). For the celestial couple, the husband is the
good and the wife is the truth (xx). Their conjugial unity is the result of the
universal unity between good and truth in the Lord. Marriage is holy because it
is an image of the marriage of good and truth in the Lord (xx). Marriage on earth is holy only when the
husband’s truth unites with the wife’s love, which is nothing else than her
affections. In other words, when the husband loves to act
from her affections more than from his own.
The
surrendered husband loves to meet his wife’s requests because that’s how he reciprocates
in conjoining himself with her, as she is conjoining herself with him. The man
who rebels and hates the feminine sphere perceives her wishes and instructions
as demands, as nagging, as taking away his freedom, as going too far, as power
hungry, as misguided, etc. I have felt all these feelings and they are general
to men, because biological and cultural.
A Christian, because he knows the Lord, has the Word, and
since the Lord places the church in him through its means, it is obvious that
he is more able than the non-Christian to be reborn, so becoming spiritual, and
to achieve truly conjugial love, since these go together. (CL 339)
A husband is a form of truth, and his wife a form of good,
and that good cannot love any other truth than its own truth, nor can truth
love any other good in return than its own good. If it were to love another, the inner
marriage that forms the church would die, and the marriage would become merely
external - the kind of marriage that idolatry corresponds to, not the church.
(CL 76)
Here it is
revealed how the “inner marriage” or internal unity,
can be achieved. The husband loves his wife as his own good attached to
his truth. Not his own good attached to his own truth—for this is the
life of an unregenerate single man, or an unregenerate married man who avoids
internal unity with his wife. To take his wife’s good as his own means to
love to act from what is in her will more than what is in his own will.
This is Rule 1 as discussed throughout this chapter.
[3] Take as
another example conjugial love. The good which comes first and is introductory
is good looks, or good manners, or outward compatibility, or similarity of
social class, or aspiration. These forms of good are the first intermediate
ones of conjugial love.
After this
comes the joining together of minds (animus) in which one wills as the other
does and finds delight in doing that which is pleasing to the other. This is
the second state, and although those initial forms of good are still present
they are no longer kept in view.
Finally there follows a uniting involving celestial good and spiritual
truth. That is
to say, one believes as the other believes, and one is moved by an affection for good as the other is moved. When this state
is reached both together experience the heavenly marriage, which is a marriage
of good and truth, and so experience conjugial love since conjugial love is
nothing else.
At the same
time the Lord is flowing into the affections of them both as into a single
affection. This is a good which flows in down a direct line, whereas the
previous kind of good which had flowed in down an indirect line had served as
the means of introduction to this good. (AC 4145)
Note the
statement: “At the same time the Lord is flowing into the affections of them
both as into a single affection.” The expression “into the affections of them
both as into a single affection” refers to what might be called the conjoint
self.
Why must
the husband surrender to his wife before he can achieve the conjoint self?
Because:
He hates
giving up his prerogatives and superiority status
He loves to
have dominion over her
He has
justified his superiority by philosophy or religion
He doesn’t
trust women’s abilities
He hates
the sphere of conjugial love she has within her
He
ridicules or gets enraged at the idea he should act from her will
He
justifies the falsity in his mind that it should be a kind of equity
arrangement—he has his roles and his places assigned by society and religion,
and she has hers.
What
about the idea that the wife often doesn’t know as much as he does about many
things, and so it wouldn’t be prudent or rational to let her make the decisions
instead of him.
You will
see that this is not a real danger, only an imagined one. It’s a doubt about
women being able to be reasonable and practical. It’s the generalized gender
bias that men have about women from inheritance and from culture. This biased
reasoning says, How can you trust women to make the right decisions about so
many things where men are used to making the decisions—etc. These are the
doubts that come from not valuing women. The external philosophy of equity that
men try to impose on women is nothing but a ploy. And unless men awake from
this subconscious acquiescence, they will be men no longer, for the
unregenerate man turns into a sub-human worse than any beast (TCR 564). Man’s
salvation is regeneration of character, for which the wife is a Divinely appointed and essential instrument. This has
been justified by many quotations from the Writings in Section 1 above.
Many
intelligent men will admit to this: that the wife is essential in their life.
And yet they do not ordinarily mean essential for their inner life, but
essential for their outer life. By their outer life they mean their intellectual
and economic power and their achievements and awards, including successful
children. Many men admit that without their woman they would not have achieved
what they did. And also, that they could not be content in
life without being in love with this woman. These are noble legends.
He may have convinced himself easily enough that he believes them sincerely. If
indeed it had been the truth, his woman would have been in the fullness of her
being, conjoint to him from within. But instead, she has been offered a fake
marriage life, one that has the trappings of external propriety, success, and
happiness, but not the real life and animation that is supposed
to be within these outward achievements and enactments.
The outward
married life remains an enactment until it grows a spiritual reality within. This
is the spiritual union held together by each being the other’s all in all in
their willing and thinking. Can she achieve this without his reciprocation?
No, not in the least, for spiritual love requires reciprocation to become alive
and real.
He is
satisfied with the outer success, but she languishes from within. He is content
to wait and let time pass, endless years and decades to her, waiting for her
real man to enter her.
And so what
is to be done?
The surrendered
husband is a practical proposal. It is just another way of saying the Doctrine
of the Wife, which is discussed at length in the preceding section. Women are
intelligent and wise from within from heaven from the Lord. They will not do
anything that is contrary to conjugial love. This is their highest love and
all other loves are placed below and subdued under its command and absolute
rule. This is woman’s wisdom: the certitude they feel from within as to whether
something is this way or that way in relation to her husband. This is a
Divine perception women receive from the Lord regarding their husband (CL 166). It is a perception of seeing the husband’s spiritual mind and
content, his inner affections, loves, and reasoning through them. She knows this
thoroughly, fully. More than he ever will—until he knows it
from her, when he is united to her.
The wife
will know when to make a decision, and when to let him make it. She would never
override him except for one reason: she can see the danger he cannot see. So it
makes total sense that he should listen to her and really believe from within
that she has this perception from the Lord. This is the religion of the
But, but
what if she makes mistakes? What if she is uneducated? What if she’s got
weaknesses, blindnesses, even neuroses and addictions? The answer is: And what
if he has these things? Husbands make many many mistakes, do they not? Is there
somebody there to remove him from the office of decision maker and over rider
of her opinions when events prove her to have been right and he
to have been wrong? No of course not. He makes mistakes as he goes along and
the family lives with it. The point is that if he’s willing to live with the
consequences of her mistakes she will gradually improve and be at least as good
as he used to be—with his help. This is the point. Perhaps he needs to educate
her views when ignorant, just as she does that for him. After all, he is free
to do as he wants at any time whatsoever. His acting from her will is purely
voluntary. He has the exercise that power at any time. Again the point is this:
is he after dominion over her or after internal union? This he must answer
for himself moment by moment.
It makes
sense to think that the Lord is managing this process as closely as any other
in the universe. The Lord longs for the husband to want to be united to the
wife. The Lord calls the two together, “One flesh,” and “His Church.” (CL 178)
The husband-wife conjoint self makes the one angel that is the Church to which
the Lord is married.(CL 62). Not the husband by
himself, ever, even if he comes to the gates of heaven in Aaron’s robes. The
only admittance to heaven for a male man is as a conjugial husband (CL 50). The
only.
And so is
this not the most important work a man has—to prepare his mind to be a
conjugial husband? Which is why a religious discipline is
needed, as discussed throughout this chapter.
The natural
world tends to be male dominated, but not because of men’s superior
intelligence to women. It is a “man’s world” because the unregenerated natural
mind operates by the corporeal principle of “might makes right.” The feeling
from which this idea issues is at the level of animals and men’s affections are
at the animal level of operation in the unregenerate state. But when they begin
to be regenerated their internal mind is opened and receives feminine intelligence
through his wife from the Lord. This softening and humanizing of the man shows
that man on his own is only a half-man:
And when
they become one, then taken together they are man in
his fullest sense. But without that conjunction they are two, and each is like
a person divided or half a person. (CL 37)
(For more
on the spiritual psychobiology of gender see Note 16 at end).
For years
now I’ve made it a habit to keep notepads all around the house and write down
many of my wife’s observations. I can accurately state that her perceptions and
insights form the starting point of the many rational and spiritual ideas I
elaborate in this and related articles. I’m especially stimulated by the way
her observations contain nonobvious connections to other things, revealing to
my sight relationships that raise the level of my understanding and
explanations. This cross-gender intellectual borrowing and sharing process
creates a more interior spiritual dimension in our relationship. The wife’s
interior wisdom from the Lord descends into the natural-rational intelligence
of the husband where he builds it into an outward shape that has many new uses.
In this way
it has become true that I think from my wife, which is Rule 1 in conjugial
development (see Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1). If
you ask her she would tell you that this is the ideal to which I am officially
committed, but that my actual adherence to it is variable. Therefore I continue
to struggle, turning to the Lord for strength to persist. And He always gives
it, if only I would take it from Him.
The
Husbands
would do well to explain this to their wife. They need to show them how their
conjugial efforts are grounded in the Writings and that this is the cornerstone
of their salvation. Only through religion can the
Now my
husband, remember what struggle you are in. This is your life, our eternity.
Come now, gather your spiritual strength and your religious motives and go
forth in victory over your ego and arrogance. Compel yourself to act from me,
my standards, my guidance, my will. For only this is from the
Lord in our marriage and what is from you is hell itself. I will help
you if only you will help yourself. Give up your rebellion and act like I say
to you. Etc.
I’m sure
you can understand the intended meaning in this representation and apply it to
the particulars of your unique life situation. The wife is to fight for you
with all that the Lord gives her, and you are to fight yourself by compelling
yourself voluntarily to act from her. This is the spiritual discipline for
conjugial husbands.
For many
years I’ve been keeping track of my interactions with my wife and my behavior
as a husband. This has helped me greatly to become actually aware of attitudes,
opinions, and behaviors that I have developed from socialization and culture
that are opposed to the development of conjugial love (see Note 16 at end). I
noted the many unexamined ways that I insisted on my male prerogatives which a
“man’s world” bestows upon men. Husbands interrupt when wives talk and instead
of listening they give premature advice. Husbands determine the majority of
topics being transacted by refusing to address issues raised by the wives.
Husbands raise their voices and make scary faces when they disagree or are
angry about this or that. These are maladaptive methods men use to intimidate
women whose sensitivities are threatened and injured by this manly harshness. A
crucial mental discipline for
Making
lists is very helpful. Keeping cumulative records is what makes into a discipline.
What makes it into a spiritual discipline is being motivated to use the
records for self-change efforts in conjugial cooperation. Whatever the husband
does consciously for the sake of preparing himself for conjugial love is a
spiritual discipline.
Those who
enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view in their marriage; but the
reverse is true of those who do not.
The reason
why those who enjoy truly conjugial love have eternity in view is that eternity
is contained within this love. This is because this love increases for ever in
the case of the wife, and wisdom increases for ever in the case of the husband;
and as these increase and develop, the couple plunges deeper and deeper into
the blessings of heaven, which lie hidden in their wisdom and also the love for
it. So if the notion of eternity were torn away, or by
any accident slipped from their minds, it would be as if they were cast down
from heaven.
(…)
It is much
the same with marriages on earth. When couples there love each other dearly,
they think of their partnership as eternal, and pay no attention to its being
ended by death. But if they do think of this, it upsets them; though they are
revived by hope, when they think of it continuing after death. (CL 216)
Keeping
self-witnessing records conscientiously is a discipline. Consulting the wife’s
perceptions about the records for the sake of conjoining their perspective, makes it into a spiritual discipline. It is
painful due to our inborn pride and runs against the grain of our culturally
received male chauvinism and male prerogatives. Resistance to the process is
strong and motivation falters. Overcoming these constantly opposing forces is
the discipline. The results are very beneficial and promote conjugial
friendship and unity. This makes it into a spiritual discipline.
6. Divine Truth Within Which Is Divine Love
Married and
pre-married men can practice many conjugial disciplines that relate to their
relationship to a wife. Pre-married men can practice by viewing every girl or
woman as someone’s wife. In addition, Christian women have conjugial love
implanted and imprinted by nativity (CL 216, 457). The reason only Christian
women have this is that conjugial love is only from the Lord and so He alone
must be acknowledged in order to receive it (CL 71). Nevertheless the women who
are not Christian can also be in conjugial love in the afterlife, when they are
instructed regarding the Lord and are willing to receive it (HH 512[3]). The
The Lord’s
perfection lies in this: that in Him infinite things that are distinct make a
one (DLW 223). The
This unity
cannot be understood outside the intellectual sphere of the Writings. To
understand it rationally one needs to apply several things to it: the law of
discrete degrees (DLW 186), the Lord’s Proprium that angels use for themselves
(AC 8409), the organic composition of the will and understanding (DLW 373), the
perfection of unity from discrete elements (DLW 201), the character of
temptations (natural, spiritual, celestial) (NJHD 196), the gradual character
of regeneration (CL 146), conjugial simulation (CL 282), what chastity is and
is not (CL 138), the wife’s interior perception of their husbands which
husbands do not have on themselves (CL 166), and other things besides. In the
context of these ideas from the Writings physical and mental disciplines can
serve to strengthen a man’s suitability for conjugial union.
The focus
is on the husband because conjugial love is not inscribed on men from birth as
it is on women. It is revealed that men are promiscuous from birth like animals
(CL 48) and if they are going to enter heaven they must regenerate into a
celestial human being. Only this interior human can unite in perfection with a
wife who has conjugial love implanted in her soul.
Conjugial
love is lodged with chaste wives, but their love still depends upon their
husbands.
The reason
is that wives are by birth forms of love, so that it is innate in them to wish
to be one with their husbands, and by keeping this thought in their will they
constantly nurture their love. So abandoning the effort to unite themselves
with their husbands would be abandoning their own nature. But it is different
with husbands; since they are not by birth forms of love, but designed to
receive that love from their wives, the more readily they receive it, the more
readily do their wives come in with their love. But if they fail to receive it,
their wives equally stay outside with their love and wait.
This
happens in the case of chaste wives, but it is different with the unchaste.
These considerations will establish that conjugial love is lodged with wives,
but their love depends upon their husbands. (216bis) (see also CL 457)
Physical
and mental disciplines by men performed for the purpose of conjugial motives,
as defined in the Writings, are spiritual disciplines. But
not otherwise.
From what is
implanted in them, wives wish to be wives and to be called wives. To them, this
is a name of beauty and honor and for that reason they love the bonds of
marriage. Moreover, chaste wives wish to be wives not in name only but
actually, and because this is effected by an ever closer tie with their
husbands, therefore they love the bonds of marriage by reason of the stability
of its covenant; and this the more, as they in turn are loved by their husbands
or, what is the same thing, as the men love those bonds. (CL
217.) (See also CL 457)
Self-witnessing
is at the basis of these disciplines. (See Note 20 for more on self-witnessing
techniques).
The
The
distance or externalization is a process of becoming more and more inert, that
is, less and less life which is the inmost substance of every object. This
inmost of every object and particle is the life of existence in a created
reality. The word “distance” in this context must be taken as a correspondence
for the exteriorization process of creation by substance and intermediaries
(xx). The originating substance in sequential order becomes the inmost
substance in simultaneous order (xx). The originating substance of created
objects is the substance that emanates from the spiritual Sun. This substance
is called “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love” (xx).Therefore the inmost
of every object or particle in the universe is “Divine Truth within which is
Divine Love.”
This inmost
substance called “Divine Truth within which is Divine Love,” is living in
itself, or life in itself. It is an uncreate substance that belongs to the
Lord, and is infinite, since infinite distinct things are contained in it as
one. You can see that this substance is be source of
infinite distinct or unique things in the created universe. This momentous scientific revelation gives
the human race a far higher consciousness of reality than was possible before.
The level
of thinking, reasoning, and understanding the workings of the universe is
immeasurably increased by this revelation. One important implication is that the
universe is rational. The universe is rational since it is created from truth,
within which is good. Truth is the inmost substance out of which a thing
exists! What an amazing revelation of reality! For instance, a rock, the brain,
and a feeling are all created out of truth as a substance of love. Truth
creates not from itself but from love or good. Still, it is not love that
creates but truth from love. This is what makes the universe rational, and what
is rational is both human and alive. Rational defines the human (xx) because
the human mind is created an organ for the reception of rational truths from
the Divine. When these rational truths are appropriated, loved, and lived, they
become our heaven in eternity. But without rational truths appropriated to ourselves
by loving them, there can be no heavenly life in us, but only infernal, for all
life in human beings is either heavenly or infernal (xx). This is the result of
the fact that all things of truth are heavenly, while all things of hell are
falsifications or distortions of truth.
This is the
same as saying that the living function or quality is hidden more and more
within, and doesn’t show in its effects. Animals are less externalized and the
life within is visible and obvious. Human minds are the least externalized of
the created things, especially the consciousness or rationality of human
beings. The minds of women are more interiorized than the minds of men. The
male human is more externalized than the female human.
Every man is created that he may live for ever. In the
treatise THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, Parts Third and Fifth, it is shown that in
man there are three degrees of life, called the natural, the spiritual and the
celestial, and that these degrees are actually in every man; while in beasts
there is only one degree of life, which is similar to the lowest degree in man
called the natural. From this it follows that man by the elevation of his life
to the Lord is in such a state above the beasts that he is able to understand
what pertains to the Divine Wisdom and to will what pertains to the Divine
Love, and in this way to receive the Divine; and he who can receive the Divine
so as to see and perceive it in himself cannot be otherwise than conjoined to
the Lord, and through this conjunction cannot but live for ever.
(…)
In order that every man may live for ever, what is mortal
with him is taken away. His mortal part is the material body which is taken
away by his death. His immortal part, which is his mind, is thus unveiled and
he then becomes a spirit in human form, his mind being that spirit.
(…)
As it has been granted me to speak with angels I will also
say something from my own experience. I have talked with some who lived many
ages ago, with some who lived before the Flood and with some who lived after
it, with some who lived in the time of the Lord, with one of His Apostles, and
with many who lived in later times. They all appeared like men of middle age,
and they said they did not know what death is, but only that there is condemnation.
Moreover, all who have lived well, when they enter heaven, come into the state
of early manhood they reached in the world and continue in it to eternity, even
those who had been old and decrepit men in the world. Women, too, although they
had been shrunken and aged, return to the flowering period of their age and
beauty.
(…)
Thus every man is created that he may enter heaven. This is
the end of creation; but all do not enter heaven because they become imbued
with the delights of hell which are opposite to the happiness of heaven; and
those who are not in the happiness of heaven cannot enter heaven, for they
cannot endure it. To no one who enters the spiritual world is it denied to
ascend to heaven; but when one who is in the delight of hell enters heaven his
heart palpitates, his breathing is labored, his life begins to fail, he is in
anguish, distress and torment, and he writhes like a serpent placed close to a
fire. This is so because opposites act against each other.
(…)
Nevertheless, they cannot die, as they were born men and
thereby with the faculty of thinking and willing, and consequently of speaking
and acting. However, as they can live only with those who are in a similar
delight of life they are sent to them; thus those who are in the delights of
evil and those who are in the delights of good are sent to their own
appropriate companions. It is indeed granted everyone to experience the delight
of his own evil provided he does not molest any who are in the delight of good;
but as evil cannot do otherwise than molest good, for there is inherent in evil
hatred against good, therefore lest the wicked should inflict injury they are
removed and cast down to their own place in hell, where their delight is turned
to what is the reverse of delightful.
(DP 324)
7. Is The Surrendered Husband Feminized?
In earlier
drafts and articles I used the term “feminization,” as in “the feminization of
marriage” or “the feminization of the husband” and, “the feminization of the
universe” and also, “the feminization of the Church.” I have a note to myself
to go back to my earlier articles and edit out the word “feminization” from the
sub-titles as this might be a kind of red flag to some people. While discussing
the matter with my wife I suddenly got the sense that it might be an
unnecessary stumbling block. Some men might not be able initially to shake the
negative implications of this word when applied to a man.
Yet the underlying idea in the
feminization of marriage, husband, universe, or Church, is that conjugial love
is returning to earth (xx). Conjugial love is feminine. When the husband is feminized it means
nothing else than that he has acquired conjugial love, which is now part of
him. It cannot mean that his traits have become feminine since it is a Divine
Law by creation that not a single thing in a man can be like a single think in
a woman (xx). The man before being feminized by conjugial love is the same man
as afterwards, except that he now has conjugial love as part of him whereas he
did not before that.
8. The Conjoint Mind Is Both Masculine And Feminine
The Lord
has now revealed the scientific fact that a man by himself is an incomplete
creation and is still to develop to maturity. The mature man is created into
perfection when he is no longer an individual man, but a structural or organic
part of his wife, so that the two together are one angel (xx). Only as an
angel-husband is a man in his created perfection. It is just like the surgical
reintegration and attachment of a man and a woman in which her lungs are
removed and her heart is attached to his lungs. And his heart is removed and
his lungs are attached to her heart. This integrated new body corresponds to
the conjoint mind of an angel-couple, which therefore has both masculine and
feminine characteristics.
The
Doctrine of the Wife, through Rule 1, creates the conjoint mind. Through Rule 1
the husband’s will, which corresponds to his heart, is removed, and it is
replaced by the wife’s heart to which he keeps himself cleaving by conjugial
love and the motive to acquire it. From the perspective of the husband, thinking
and acting from his wife’s will, which corresponds to her heart, is to lay
aside his individual independent will, which was entirely masculine. Henceforth
his masculine understanding is to operate from a feminine will, just as his masculine
lungs would be purified of impurities and poisons by the feminine heart to
which he is now joined. To be a conjoint mind means that the husband thinks
from his wife’s will or affections, and the wife thinks
from her husband’s understanding or thoughts. He is feminized while she is masculinized,
even though they each retain their full gender, gaining everything, losing
nothing.
What does it mean specifically to
say that the husband loves to think and act from the wife’s willing more than
from his own willing?
Consider
how you might describe your daily behavior. You act in accordance with your
thinking, which is from your willing. In other words, the motives and
affections in your will select and direct those thoughts that serve its
affections and motives. The thinking is therefore from the willing, and the
acting is from both of them together. This is the way we operate prior to being
a conjugial husband.
As we are
reformed by the Doctrine of the Wife, and struggle daily and hourly to follow
Rule 1, we begin gradually to change from the operation just described. Now we
inhibit and weaken and suppress our own affections and motives in interacting
with our wife. Instead, we begin to compel our thinking to fit the wife’s
requests and needs. This is gradual because we do not hear her requests except
in a weak sense at first, gradually gaining strength until we can actually hear
the request she had been making for years. Then we sometimes compel ourselves
to think in accordance with the request, but sometimes we choose not to, and
then we slide back, to the chagrin and suffering of the poor wife. But
eventually we get better at it, more honest in our attempts, and at last our
wife begins to say new things about us, things that a conjugial wife says to
her conjugial husband who has become her bosom friend.
The more we
think from the wife’s willing, the more our mind is conjoined to her mind. When
our thinking is done from her willing, our doing will be called the works of
conjugial love. This is what the Lord has Commanded by
saying that the man shall leave father and mother and cleave unto his wife
(xx). “Father and mother” refers to the man’s own willing and thinking, since
willing relates to good, and “father” represents good, while thinking relates
to truth, and “mother” represents truth or the Church in us. We leave our own
“father and mother”
by laying aside our own willing, and the independent masculine thinking that
goes with that willing. And in its stead, we hook ourselves into our wife’s
willing by knowing her affections and hearing her requests. This is the meaning
of the promise to “honor” her which we solemnly make at our sacred wedding. “To
cleave to the wife” signifies to honor her by reforming our thinking to fit her
willing, and then acting by the new thinking from her willing. In this way we act agreeably to her and she
can conjoin herself to our new mind even more than before. this is a continuous process over the years. Happy is the
couple on this earth that is immersed in this process.
Conjugial
love is the highest of all loves and uses in the universe (xx), for which all
other loves exist, for which all created objects exist. Conjugial love is
called a celestial love (xx). This highest of all loves is received from the Lord
in the inmost of the wife, and conjugial love in the wife becomes the source of
conjugial love for the husband (xx). It is in the husband only to the extent
that her heart is in his, that is, to the extent that
he has appropriated to himself her affections and now thinks and acts from
them. Thus, he is in the state described by Rule 1 of the Doctrine of the Wife.
This is meant by the elevated husband.
Conjugial love in the man is
therefore the exchanging of his old masculine will and affections for her
feminine affections, which are her will, her love. Her love is now in him and he
thinks and acts from her love.
All
thinking and acting is from love (xx), and he either acts from his own love or
from her love in him.
To be able
to act and think form her love requires that he appropriate her love, that is, make
her affections to be in his will. This appropriation, or interiorization, is
achieved solely by loving them, for only loving something can be appropriated
to a human being. Once appropriated, it remains forever. Now he is a new man,
for the man is his intelligence, and this is such as his love is (DLW xx). Now
he acts from a higher love than before because woman’s love is higher than
man’s, her love being celestial, while his love being spiritual, and the two
are as far apart as the noonday sun light is from the midnight moon light (xx).
Man was
created into a perfect order. He arrives in this perfect order when he becomes the
elevated husband. He achieves this higher existence by exchanging the hereditary
and acquired masculine affections in his will with the feminine affections of
his conjugial life. Her affections are higher because she is the only one that
receives conjugial love directly from the Lord (xx). The Lord provides that the
husband also has conjugial love, but not directly from Him, but directly from
his wife. This appropriation to himself of the Lord’s conjugial love in her, effects
his elevation. And this appropriation of her love as his own makes him hers,
for he now is what his love is, purely hers. His new thoughts are now created
by this new will, which is his wife’s in him. These new thoughts are higher
than his thoughts before the makeover of his will. Now the wife takes these new
thoughts into herself as she does his seed through the thighs (xx). This is her
delight of unity that is indescribable according to the celestial wives who
talked to Swedenborg about it in a rose garden (xx).
Chapter 2, Section 5
5. Rule 1: The Regeneration Discipline Of Acting From The Wife
The
Doctrine of the Wife is a Spiritual Doctrine that can be summarized in the form
of a correspondence expressed in the natural-rational expression called Rule 1:
RULE 1:
The first
and only rule is that husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more
than from self.
(See Chapter
9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
Every man
always acts and thinks from his love. The understanding thinks form the will
(xx), and such as the love is in the will, such is the intelligence in the
understanding (DLW xx). Prior to regeneration, the husband acts and thinks from
his own loves in the will. As he undergoes regeneration he learns more and more
to act and thin from his wife’s loves which originate in her will, but which he
has appropriated to himself by loving them more than he loves his own
affections. Clearly, the consistent application of Rule 1 will guarantee that
the husband acquires a new will. This is what it means to say that the Lord
created Eve as an help mate to Adam. Were Adam to
continue thinking and acting from his own love, he has no choice but to fall
into self-love. Loving one’s own intelligence is the serpent of hell (xx). So
the Lord provides that the wife take the husband’s intelligence into herself as
she takes his seed through the thighs (xx). And the Lord provides that the
husband take the wife’s affections into himself by cleaving to them, which is
to love them and to do them. Now they can each love their reciprocal in the
other, which is the conjugial unity from within, namely a unity of minds or
spirit.
Note that
Rule 1 eliminates all elements of dominion from the couple. At first the male
mind abhors this notion. All sorts of oppositions arise to make this a hard
rule for him. Its felt hardness or pain comes from its opposition to the
numerous male prerogatives that we receive from culture and which we like and
don’t want to give up. The corporeal self is not about to give them up without
a fight to the death. This is the death of the unregenerate corporeal self we
have from birth. This animal mind is turned against the interior rational or
human (TCR 564[2]). It must die (AC 1408). And in its place the Lord creates a
new corporeal that is obedient to the interior human and suitable for conjugial
union.
Consider
what the Lord is saying to us about conjugial unity:
Marriage in
heaven is a conjunction of two into one mind. It must first be explained what
this conjunction is. The mind consists of two parts, one called the
understanding and the other the will. When these two parts act as one they are called one mind. In heaven the husband acts the
part called the understanding and the wife acts the part called the will. When
this conjunction, which belongs to man's interiors, descends into the lower parts
pertaining to the body, it is perceived and felt as love, and this love is
marriage love. This shows that marriage love has its origin in the conjunction
of two into one mind. This in heaven is called cohabitation; and the two are
not called two but one. So in heaven a married pair is spoken of, not as two,
but as one angel. (HH 367)
As husbands, our eternal life in heaven
depends on learning to love to be conjoined to our wife in an internal union,
not external. How do you figure you’re going to acquire this love? None of us men have it from birth and all our upbringing and culture
has led us to oppose this kind of union and to fight against it, yeah, to
desire to destroy any vestige of it that we can see in our wife. Women are born
with conjugial love, implanted by the Lord from nativity (CL 223). But men must acquire it through the
wife—there is no other source.
So it stands to reason we’re not going to
heaven if we do not suffer ourselves to acquire this love from the wife. Rule 1
is the regeneration discipline that can get us there! The Lord has Commanded that we do everything in our power to get there!
The celestial husband is called the elevated husband. This is the Lord’s
purpose an intent in creating him. The elevated
husband has reached into the creation of his perfection and is a true image of
the Lord. His wife’s heart is in him and directs his thoughts and drives his
acts. The Lord’s conjugial love enters her will and by making her will his own,
the husband is appropriating conjugial love. There is no other salvation for
man but through his wife. The man cannot approach the Lord directly to obtain
this love and therefore he remains at a distance from the Lord without this
love in him.
And since this
love can be in the husband only by his interiorizing her affections, you can
see that Rule 1 of the Doctrine of the Wife becomes the only means of salvation
the Lord has provided for the husband who is forming the New Church mind in
himself.
You can see from the passage above that “In
heaven the husband acts the part called the understanding and the wife acts the
part called the will” (HH 367). It is said that the wife acts the part of the will
because it is her will in the husband that animates his acts and thoughts. It
is said that the husband acts the part of the understanding because it is the
understanding that acts, but it acts not from itself but from the will (xx).
1. Achieving Internal
Husband and wife in heaven make one angel—I
call this the conjoint self. The angel couple is a husband and wife, two
distinct individuals, each with their own mind and spirit-body, each with their
own daily duties and activities with others in their angelic society (xx). Outwardly
it appears that the elevated husband acts from his own will as he goes about
his daily activities with other husbands, making decisions, dealing with
visitors, etc. (xx) But this outward appearance does not make apparent what is
going on in the interior mind of the angel husband.
The following Number gives a description of conjugial
love by means of the correspondences expressed as a Memorable Relation in CL
75. I will add some comments after each segment regarding its correspondences.
The purpose of figuring out the correspondences is to apply the Letter to one’s
regeneration. If we merely read the Memorable Relations, remaining in its
literal meaning, and not considering its correspondences, we do not know how to
apply the Number to oneself. Yet the Word is given for
our regeneration. By figuring out the correspondences we can gain a clearer
understanding of what the Number is discussing from a spiritual perspective
rather than natural-rational. On the surface it appears that this Memorable
Relations is about a visit Swedenborg made to the heaven of the people from the
The Spiritual Doctrine we extract according
to this internal series, is the means by which we are
to be regenerated. Therefore we need to see each expression as a
correspondence, and that constitutes the first step of extracting the Spiritual
Doctrine (see Volume 2 for more details on this process).
The first experience.
I was once
meditating about conjugial love, when my mind was seized with a desire to know
what this love had been like in the case of those who lived in the Golden Age,
and also in the following ages, which were named after silver, copper and iron.
(…) At once I found an angel beside me, who said: 'I have been sent by the Lord
to be your guide and companion. First I shall guide and accompany you to those
who lived in the first era or age, known as golden. (…) I was in the spirit, so
I prepared myself for traveling, and we set our faces towards the east. As we
went I saw a mountain, the top of which was higher than the level of the clouds.
... (CL 75)
Swedenborg represents the
To “be in the spirit” means
that we are being regenerated by the Spiritual Doctrine, not the Letter. To “set the face to the east” signifies to obtain the Spiritual
Doctrine, for this is the Lord (xx), and the “east” in the human mind refers to
the Spiritual Doctrine we have acquired from the Letter. “To see a mountain” in
the east signifies the Lord’s presence in the Spiritual Doctrine, for He is
called a Mountain. That the top of the mountain “was higher
than the level of the clouds” signifies that the Spiritual Doctrine is from the
spiritual sense within the Letter. It is the Letter that is called a
cloud (xx). Above also means within (xx) and therefore the expression “higher
than the level of the clouds” means the spiritual sense within the Letter.
Continuing with the Number:
We went across
this plain and saw tents upon tents to the number of many thousand extending as
far as the eye could see before us and to the sides in all directions … When
these men saw us, they hurried up to us and said: 'Where do you come from, and
how have you come here? Your faces are not those of the people of our mountain
... (CL 75)
The expression “to go across a plain”
signifies a change of state. The expression “to see tents
upon tents” signifies to be conjoined to “holy things of love, namely, the
walking uprightly, and working righteousness” (AC 414). The expression “to
the number of many thousand extending as far as the eye could see before us and
to the sides in all directions” represents the universal presence of conjugial
love in all creation. It is said that Swedenborg’s “face is not the face of the
people of the mountain” by which is signified that the
Since I was
thinking that I wanted to know about marriage among the most ancient people, I
looked in turn from husband to wife and back again, and observed that their
faces showed how they were almost of one soul. So I said: 'You two are one.'
The man replied: 'We are one. Her life is in me and mine is in her, so we are
two bodies, but one soul. The union between us is like that of the two cavities
in the chest, called the heart and lungs. She is my heart and I am her lungs.
But since by heart we understand here love and by lungs wisdom, she is the love
of my wisdom, and I am the wisdom of her love. Her love therefore forms the
outer covering of my wisdom and my wisdom is inwardly inside her love. As a
result, as you said, the unity of our souls is to be seen in the look of our
faces ... (CL 75)
The expression “wanting to know about
marriage among the most ancient people” signifies readiness to be regenerated for
the sake of conjugial love. Conjugial love in its interior is the unity between
the husband’s understanding and the wife’s will. “Her
life” refers to the wife’s will (“she is my heart”), while the husband’s life
in the wife refers to his understanding (“I am her lungs”) which she
appropriates as belonging to her love (“she is the love of my wisdom”).
This organic unity between husband and wife
is the celestial state in which conjugial couples are.
The second
account:
One time, while
speaking with angels in the spiritual world, I was filled with a pleasant wish
to see the
The expression “while speaking with angels
in the spiritual world” signifies that the
I saw inside
that the building was divided into two sections, and yet the two were still
one. It was divided into two sections by
a transparent partition, but it looked like one room because of the partition's
transparency, which was like the transparency of the purest crystal. I asked why it was arranged like that.
The building represents the truths of
Doctrine arranged in their order. The two sections represent the Letter and its
spiritual sense. That “the two were one” signifies the spiritual sense within
the Letter makes a one. That they are separated by a transparent partition
means that those who are enlightened by the Lord when reading the Letter can perceive
the spiritual sense within it. The Letter in the understanding represents
reformation, while the spiritual sense represents regeneration.
The
receptionist said, "I am not alone.
My wife is with me, and though we are two, yet we are not two but one
flesh."
“My wife is with me” signifies that the
affections in the will are regenerated by means of the truths in the
understanding. When the understanding is reformed and the will is regenerated,
they form a marriage or union, so that they act together, as one.
To which I
replied, "I know you are wise, but what does a wise man or wisdom have to
do with a woman?"
This signifies the desire to know how the
will and the understanding make a unity.
At this, with
some feeling of annoyance, the receptionist's expression changed, and he
stretched out his hand, and suddenly, then, other wise men were present from the
neighboring buildings. To them he said
with amusement, "Our visitor here says he wants to know what a wise man or
wisdom has to do with a woman!"
They all
laughed at this and said, "What is a wise man or wisdom apart from a woman
or apart from love? A wife is the love
of a wise man's wisdom." (…)
After these and
several other similar views were expressed, one of the wives appeared through
the crystal-like partition, and she said to her husband, "Speak, if you
wish."
And when he
spoke, the life in his wisdom from his wife was perceived in his speech, for
her love was in the tone of his voice.
Thus did experience bear witness to the truth expressed.
(CL 76)
The transparent partition in their dwelling
place portrays how the two minds—husband and wife—act as one. The dwelling
place (house, tent, palace) represents the mind in
which there are many things that are our own. Husband and wife live in one
dwelling place that they share and each consider as their own. The partition
represents the fact that husband and wife are each an individual, permanently
distinct. The transparency of the partition makes it disappear as if it wasn’t
there. This represents the fact that husband and wife act as one conjoint self.
How is this possible? It is explained how: he acts from his wife’s will and she
acts through her husband’s understanding. Another way of saying this is that
her will and his understanding make up one conjoint self. That is, when the
husband thinks, he does it from the wife’s affections and motives, and
therefore when the husband acts, he acts from the wife. His thoughts are
nothing but the outward form of her affections (xx).
It is not possible for an angel husband to
act from his own will—without immediately losing all his angelic happiness and
wisdom (xx). Picture yourself as an angel husband in the afterlife: you will
then love to act from her will more than from your own will, or else you could
not be there. Now ask yourself: How am I going to learn to love to act
from her will more than from my own, since right now I do not have this love
and striving? The answer is that we must go through a
spiritual discipline to teach ourselves to love this new love—if indeed we wish
to become an angelic husband and live with our true love in eternal bliss. The
only other alternative is to live in hell in an infernal marriage with a
concubine we hate (CL 464). What a choice!!
It is not known at this day what marriage love is, or whence
it is ... Marriage love is willing what another wills, thus willing mutually
and reciprocally ... Those that are in marriage love dwell together in the
inmosts of life ... It is such a union of two minds that from love they are one
... For the love of minds, which is spiritual love, is a union ... (HH 367)
Moreover, such a conjunction of husband and wife in the
inmosts of their minds comes from their very creation; for man is born to be
intellectual, that is, to think from the understanding, while woman is born to
be affectional, that is, to think from her will; and this is evident from the
inclination or natural disposition of each (HH 368).
From all this it is evident that love truly conjugial is the
union of two persons in respect to their interiors, which belong to the thought
and the will, thus to truth and good; for truth belongs to the thought, and
good to the will.
For one who is in love truly conjugial loves what the other
thinks and what the other wills; thus he also loves to think as the other does,
and he loves to will as the other does; consequently to be united to the other,
and to become as one man.
This is what is meant by the Lord's words in Matthew:
"And they twain shall be one flesh, therefore they are
no more twain, but one flesh" (Matt. 19:4-6; Gen. 2:24).
(AC 10169)
It’s
important to understand that internal union with a wife is made possible by the
permanent and absolute duality in the psychobiological distinctness between man
and woman. The body could not function as itself were
it not constructed out of the circulatory and respiratory systems acting as
one. These two systems are distinct and permanently different from each other.
Only then can they achieve a perfect union as an integrated body. The conjoint
self of the married couple is a new construction by the Lord, who out of two
separate individuals, human male and human female, He creates a perfect union
of one angel. The distinctness of each, which is not a
perfection by itself, becomes a perfection in a conjoint self. This new
entity has a will and an understanding, and the will is that of the wife and
the understanding is that of the husband. United they make a functioning
angelic mind.
There is no
status differential or equity in this kind of union. Is the heart more
important than the lungs? Neither can function without the other. In the body, the
heart rules, and the lungs cooperate. The heart corresponds to the will in the
mind and the lungs to the understanding. In the conjoint self the wife rules
because she is the will. The will always rules the understanding just as the
motive always drives the plan, and the two together engender the outward act or
sensation (DLW 214). This is why it is necessary for us husbands to teach
ourselves how to act from the wife’s will. This has
got to become our permanent discipline while we are in the physical body. In
the afterlife, we will do so spontaneously and irresistibly. But here, we at
first hate it, which is why I said that we “must be willing to suffer
ourselves” to learn to act from our wife. The Lord gives us power in our
religious disciplines, the ability as-of self to carry it out. Hence it is a
commandment that we disregard our hatred for conjugial love and to simulate
loving it for as long as do not love it (see Chapter 9, Section 4 below).
There is no
conjugial love possible until the husband becomes willing to love his wife’s
thinking, reasoning, willing, and doing. This is what makes the interior union!
Clearly then all regenerating husbands must practice in doing this even if they
don’t feel like it or even if they can think of many reasons why not to. They
ought to think rationally about it and compel their natural mind to obey and
conform to this sacred commandment. They ought to simulate this behavior while
they’re learning to love it. It stands to reason that if the Lord commands us
to love Him and neighbor we have no choice but to teach ourselves how to even
if we don’t feel like it. This is true human liberty. Similarly, when the Lord
commands husbands to love their wife’s willing, thinking, and doing we have no
choice but to compel ourselves to do so even when we don’t feel like it.
Everyone,
whether man or woman, possesses understanding and will; but with the man the
understanding predominates, and with the woman the will predominates, and the
character is determined by that which predominates. Yet in heavenly marriages
there is no predominance; for the will of the wife is also the husband's will,
and the understanding of the husband is also the wife's understanding, since
each loves to will and to think like the other, that is mutually and
reciprocally. Thus are they conjoined into one. This
conjunction is actual conjunction, for the will of the wife enters into the
understanding of the husband, and the understanding of the husband into the
will of the wife, and this especially when they look into one another's faces;
for, as has been repeatedly said above, there is in the heavens a sharing of
thoughts and affections, more especially with husband and wife, because they
reciprocally love each other. This makes clear what the conjunction of minds is
that makes marriage and produces marriage love in the heavens, namely, that one
wishes what is his own to be the others, and this
reciprocally. (HH 369)
So to learn
to love this state it would be wise and prudent and good for us to practice
conjugial disciplines. At the forefront of our mind will be Rule 1: that we
are to learn to love to act from the wife more than from self. At first we
oppose this idea in our mind as all sorts of objections come in. O.K., I agree
to love her thinking and willing, but where does it say I have to act from her
thinking and willing? Wouldn’t that turn me into a zombie? Am I not responsible
for my own thinking and behaving? How can I act from another and still be
required to account for my own actions? Besides, what if she is wrong about
something? Wives have to regenerate just like other people and God knows how
many women are messed up. Should I just go along with her misconceptions and
weaknesses? Isn’t this the wrong way to love her? Etc. etc.
When these
objections come into us, the first reaction we should have is to say: All
right, whatever the answers are, the Lord will enlighten me. One thing is for
sure: I will not depart from the commandment which is that I teach myself how
to love her willing, thinking, and doing. This I’m going to do no matter what.
Then within this context of reaffirming the positive, we can go to the second
step—demolishing the objections with rational arguments based on what we have
taken up from the Writings into our mind. Once again this shows the crucial
importance of studying the Writings daily in order to accumulate all the
knowledge we need to take care of these natural dilemmas and resistances.
I have been shown how the delights of marriage love advance
towards heaven, and the delights of adultery towards hell. The advance of the
delights of marriage love towards heaven is into states of blessedness and
happiness continually increasing until they become innumerable and ineffable,
and the more interiorly they advance the more innumerable and more ineffable
they become, until they reach the very states of blessedness and happiness of
the inmost heaven, or of the heaven of innocence, and this through the most
perfect freedom; for all freedom is from love, thus the most perfect freedom is
from marriage love, which is heavenly love itself. (HH 386)
2. I’m Commanded To Not Disagree With Her
To
summarize the answers that are to be given to
objections to Rule 1: I’m commanded to love her thinking and willing. That
means her reasoning and choices in relation to our marriage and our
relationship. Obviously it doesn’t mean in other things since the special
perception she receives from the Lord has to do with all things about her
husband’s interior mind, not about his external knowledges and skills. A wife who is given the freedom by her marriage to open up her
conjugial love, loves her husband’s thinking more than she loves her own.
She is and feels herself to be the very love of his thinking (CL 193). Love
compels her to learn and adopt this thinking, and to think from it. So we
husbands need not worry at all that our wife will want to expand her sphere of
thinking to override us in our forensic and intellectual expertise. All the
objections fall to the ground when we hold this thought: Rule 1 applies to all
things of our marriage and relationship.
Now what
does it mean to love her thinking and willing? Does it not mean to want to
conjoin with it and to be as-if it? Can you love your wife’s thinking and
willing simultaneously as you disagree with her on any thing? When such a
disagreement arises in your mind, as it so often does in the course any day
with her, can you love her thinking even as you disagree? No, for one can have
only one love spiritually, and one serves either one or the other as master
(Mark
And
finally, the third step, is to keep track by
self-monitoring as to when and how often you fail the commandment.
- How often you show her that you
disagree (overtly or, tacitly by moodiness, refusal, secrecy, etc.)
- How often you hurt her (by
avoidance, intimidation, abuse, unkindness, neglect)
- How often you fail to show your
appreciation (her appearance, her sweetness, her contributions to your
happiness, her work, her loyalty, her passion)
To the
extent that we permit ourselves to disagree, hurt, or abuse our wife to that
extent we do not love her, do not love her willing and thinking, and therefore,
hate her, and hate her thinking and willing. We are then no longer free but
driven by the lust for dominion and hell. Yes, to allow ourselves to show
disagreement with our wife is to hate her. This the
Lord tells us:
That which is done from love truly conjugial is done from
freedom on both sides, because all freedom is from love, and both have freedom
when one loves that which the other thinks and that which the other wills.
From this it is that the wish to command in marriages
destroys genuine love, for it takes away its freedom, thus also its delight.
The delight of commanding, which follows in its place, brings forth
disagreements, and sets the minds at enmity, and causes evils to take root
according to the nature of the domination on the one side, and the nature of
the servitude on the other. (AC 10173)
It took me
many years to learn to comb my hair the way my wife likes to see it. My habit
from adolescence was to plaster it down flat on both sides of the part. She
would rearrange my hair, combing it so it has “body” rather than being flat.
She especially insisted on this when we went on camera or were
being interviewed with pictures for the media (see Note 17 at end). Why did it
take me years to learn to fluff my hair and give it body in the way she thought
I should look? The reason is that I preferred to act from myself rather than
from her. Thus, I was not her true friend but my own friend. And this applies
to many things that are revealed when you lead a life of self-witnessing
discipline. Find out what she doesn’t like that you do routinely, and change
it.
Do not
argue or ask for justification “first.” Just go ahead and do it for the only
reason that the Lord commands us to learn to love acting from the wife more
than from self. We need to understand why the Lord gives us this commandment,
for He wants our involvement with the rational as-of self to assent from
freedom and love of obeying Him. And the reason we should learn to love to act
from wife more than self is that only in that way can the two be united into a
conjugial union. The Lord commands us to do those things that will allow Him to
give us more from Himself, so as to make us happy from Him. This is love (HH
399).
Chapter 2, Section 6
6. Giving Up Male Prerogatives As Contrary To
Conjugial Unity
Male
prerogatives built into our mind from heredity and socialization enter into every fabric and setting of society: the home,
the workplace, recreation, dating, marriage, family, religion, drama, song.
Men, their mentality, reigns everywhere, and if women gain a political or
economic position within the male system, their behavior is sanctioned in terms
of whether or not they act consistently with the male system. This maleness of
society is maintained by both men and women in the external world. But in the
internal where women have freedom, it is different. The difference is described
by the Lord as follows:
That in itself the intelligence of women is modest, elegant,
pacific, yielding, gentle, tender; and the intelligence of men in itself is
grave, harsh, hard, spirited, fond of license. That such is the nature of women
and such the nature of men, is very manifest from the body, face, voice,
speech, bearing, and manners of each. (CL 218.)
Since
intelligence is the very face of the person and reflects one’s character (AR
433), it is clear that men are born and raised opposed to the nature of women.
As a result men hate women, subjugate them, seduce them, use them, abuse them,
and abandon them. A woman to survive has to feign male traits and behave like
men—toughness, seductiveness, rebelliousness, corporeality, independence. But
these external personality traits that women feel compelled to put on,
are discontinuous with their internal character and therefore women end up
living in stress and suffering, unable to flourish internally, suppressed and
suffocated in their genuine femininity. This deep dilemma women face in a male
dominated world, a man has to understand and take to heart where compassion and
friendship lie. The male discipline of conjugial love is a helpful tool for
overcoming the built-in male orientation that keeps us in the animal state
below our true human.
The
departure point of the husband’s conjugial discipline is to acknowledge all of
the above and to feel responsible for it. The sin that stands in the way is the
man’s accommodation to the male prerogatives he is given by birth and culture. Even men who are ardent supporters and admirers of women and
women’s causes in society, may still harbor, deeply embedded within them,
opposition to women. Consciousness of where these oppositional forces
are hidden in our mind can gradually increase under the discipline.
Self-witnessing is the only tool I know that develops this consciousness (see
Note 20 at end). And it does it only to the extent that the man is willing to
abide by Rule 1 discussed frequently above--that husbands are to learn to love
acting from the wife more than from self. Self-witnessing our numerous daily
interactions with our wife reveals the numerous areas of resistance we feel
when trying to apply this rule. Consider the quote that appeared in a previous
section:
It should be known, moreover, that, so long as man is in
knowledges only, and not in any life according to them, he is in his proprium
and led by self; but, when he is in a life according to them - and to the same
extent - he is elevated out of his proprium, and is led by the Lord. This man
does not perceive, but still it is so; and so far as man is led by the Lord, so
far is there good in him, or good is what he wills and thinks. But it should be
thoroughly known, that nobody can live according to the knowledges from the
Word, except from them he reflect upon his thoughts, intentions and deeds, that
is, examine himself, and abstain from evils and do good as from himself:
otherwise, there is no reception by man; and if there is no reception, there is
no conjunction with the Lord; therefore, neither can he be led by the Lord. (SE
5945)
Since our
mind is beset with numerous resistances to our regeneration we need to monitor what
they are, when they occur, and how we manage them in response. The resistances
are arranged in a large hierarchy and every man has to learn what his is. Near
the top are the arrogant affections for feeling superior to women, which can
only be accomplished by putting them down in our mind. When a woman speaks, a
man doesn’t listen, interrupts, and dismisses. This is the external result of
his internal arrogance towards the woman. When these chauvinistic and
undignified brow-beating strategies fail to silence her, they either remove
themselves from the wife’s sphere or they put on a fake exterior within which
there is an inward hatred for her and desire for revenge and punishment.
The
retaliation is carried out either overtly by violence and intimidation, or
covertly by passive aggression which they refuse to admit. Thus the wife is
neutralized, defeated, and rendered useless for his regeneration. No internal
union can be established as long as this process goes on. And no regeneration
can take place. His salvation and his eternal future is
now threatened. He must stop and back out of this strategy. He cannot silence and
suppress his wife without closing up the interior union between them. He needs
a conjugial discipline to save himself as of himself (AC 47, 233, 1712, 2877,
5664, 10299; NJHD 148; DP 102; CL 82; SE 5958; LJ 299; AE 864). The Lord is
knocking at the inner door, waiting for the man to turn to Him. Rule 1 is a way
to let Him in because this is His Divine Commandment to all husbands who are
forming a
But Rule 1
can only be believed by the man if he sets it into the center of his religion.
For years I tried without this requirement and I failed, to the immense
distress of my wife. But then I made it into a doctrinal issue which I called
the Doctrine of the Wife (see Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4). Rule 1 can only be
acknowledged in sincerity and power if the husband enlists the wife as a
witness of the covenant he makes between himself and the Lord. This is not a
private thing between the man and the Lord. It is a partnership covenant with
the wife that is sealed in the man’s love and worship of the Lord. This
empowers the wife to fight like a brave warrior for the life of her husband.
Nothing less is at stake—his eternal life. He has to come to the realization of
the truth that he cannot regenerate by himself so as to turn his character into
something that is suitable for conjugial union. Only those men who turn
themselves into this can live in heaven. All others live in hell. And this is
why the wife is fighting for his very life. This drama is powered and closely
supervised by the Lord Himself.
The first
phase of the discipline then, is for the husband to establish the conjugial
context and motive in his mind. This takes time and goes through a process
powered by the Lord who allows spiritual temptations in which the husband feels
reeling and screaming. He alternates between states of rage and obedience. When
obedient, his wife is encouraged and makes herself
available and lovely for him. When he is mean and rebellious, his wife is
discouraged and turns away from him inwardly. This painful dance goes on for as
long as he takes.
The second
phase of the discipline is entered when the wife perceives that her husband is
firmly grounded in his acceptance and dependability on Rule 1-- to love acting
from the wife more than from self. Now begins a new struggle in which she
patiently and bravely intervenes in her husband’s mental life. This requires
more daily and hourly attention than several babies and children need from the
mother. Everything but everything about her husband needs to be modified and
guided to life and sanity: his facial expressions, his manners, his
dependencies, his habits, his hobbies and interests, his reasoning process.
Her total
guidance and her consistent demands are at first hated by him. He feels
suffocated, suppressed, dealt with badly. It’s crucial for the success of the
discipline to keep track of all this inner resistance. I started keeping lists
and arranged them in inventories. I consulted my wife and she was always able
to add new ones to the list. Keeping track over months and years allowed me to
see how I cycle backwards, but also, how I progress forward. I kept wanting to
make exceptions, to convince her that she is exaggerating, that she is not
recognizing all the good parts, that she is trying to go too fast in our
process, that there are things which stay as long as I am in this sinful body,
that it will be different in heaven, and so on. None of this helped me. I found
with amazement that my wife’s determination in changing me was greater than mine
in resisting it.
Phase three
then began—no more fights. I acknowledged myself defeated and, O so happy and
blissful. Now came the long process of sincerely
becoming what she wants me to be as her conjugial partner. Resistance melted
away as soon as she took a stand on anything. When she was challenged by
something I thought or failed to think, or something I did or failed to do, she
was able to maintain conjugial contact, to continue perceiving that I was
dedicated to following her side rather than mine. The problem issue was a
matter of incompetence rather than vicious or gross rebellion, as before. Not:
I don’t want to do this, but, How do I do this. In
this way I gained in strength and integrity, and she gained confidence and a
measure of peace.
My new mental
outlook and motive changed the way I talk to her, behave towards her, think of
her, and love her. When I show my face to her, a smile of pleasantness comes
over it. When I address her inappropriately or with a harsh tone, I feel
instant repentance. It shocks me. When she tells me I’ve been neglecting her in
this or that, I take immediate notice and desire to make amends. I look around
to survey her setting and use my personal services or forensic skills to make
things easier for her. I come to her rescue feeling responsible for her state
of mind. I attribute all negativity to my failures and none to her. I do not
demand or accept equity or equality between us, putting her ahead of
everything. I do not use religion to put her in her place and claim male
doctrinal expertise or supremacy on this or that issue. I give her all my
private thoughts and excuses I want to make for myself so that she can use the
knowledge as weapons against my reluctances. Thus she is winning the battle and
I can look forward to eternal life in her heaven. This makes it all worth it.
And to fail is horrible and scary to contemplate:
By this is
meant, that if a man knew the hour of his death, he would prepare himself, not
indeed from the love of truth and good, but from the fear of hell; and whatever
a man does from fear remains not with him, but what he does from love remains;
therefore he must prepare himself. (AE 193)
Repentance is the first stage in the development of the
church in a person. … the church enters into a person when
he is being regenerated. Everyone is regenerated by abstaining from sinful
evils, and shunning them as anyone would on seeing the hordes of hell seeking
with torches in their hands to attack him and to throw him upon a pyre. (TCR
510)
Chapter 2, Section 7
7. The Equity Model Versus The Unity Model Of
Marriage
Contemporary
secular psychology advocates equity between married partners as the desirable
balance in their relationship. Equity has an economic-political aspect, and a
psychological aspect. Equal opportunity for women and men,
and equal pay for equal work. Though this is not practiced in the
majority of venues, it is the ideal that is upheld as right, and it is the law.
In the psychological arena equity refers to the 50-50 model of sharing duties
that ideally applies to workmates, roommates, couples living together, and
married partners and their family. Everyone does their share as expected of
them or as formally assigned by some procedure, and this has to reflect
equitable and just proportions. No one should have to do more than any other
relative to their share. The husband and the wife are told to negotiate some
sort of equitable arrangement that gets the work done, each according to
expectation or assignment. Who does the dishes; who takes out the garbage; who
balances the check book; who remembers dates; who cares about appearance; who
drives the kids somewhere; who gets to relax and be served; and so on.
Every day
brings thousands of such mutualities of service and communal decisions. The
occasion that gives psychologists to advocate the equity model is the sad
statistic that the majority of married couples don’t get along well and there
is much open or hidden anger and resentment between them. It is believed that
the equity model might be a solution because a common symptom is that of the
women complaining about the husbands with a long list of what they are not
doing that is their share to do: helping with house tasks, helping with
children, with cleaning, with guest lists and family dates, knowing when to
initiate sex and when not, doing enough to comfort her, helping her with
problems, letting her to take a vacation from routines by taking over, taking
more responsibility for many things, and so on.
The theme
in the complaints wives have of their husbands seems to be that they are not
doing enough. Therefore psychology says to the husbands: you’ve got to do more
in this relationship to make it work, and you need to increase all the way to
50-50 equity. This belief is based on the nonduality between husband and wife.
It is a natural idea, not spiritual or rational. The principle of equity in
husband-wife relations is so ubiquitous that it may be the most pernicious of
all nondualities opposing conjugial union. The race of men is more corrupted
than women because power by itself corresponds to a corporeal love that tends
to corrupt the natural mind while it remains in an unregenerate state. The
principle of equity in marital relations merely maintains the power advantage
of men and this becomes their stumbling block on which they sacrifice conjugial
union.
The duality
of conjugial love is contrastive with the equity principle. Consider Rule 1 as
discussed before:
RULE 1:
The first
and only rule is that husbands are to learn to love acting from the wife, more
than from self.
(See Chapter
9, Sections 3 and 4 for more discussion on Rule 1)
This idea
is based on the absolute duality between husband and wife. Their relationship
of unity must be based on distinctness and its perfection is that not a single
trait of the husband overlaps with any trait of the wife. Instead, the traits of each is in a reciprocal relation, and this is what
allows their perfect unity. Clearly then, making rules of nonduality between
them could not work. Rather than looking for equity arrangements the husband
must strive to learn what Rule 1 states: to love to act from the wife more than
to love to act from himself. This orientation is based on acknowledging and
honoring the absolute duality between them. He is to act from her half of the
time, and the other half of the time from himself. This would be equity.
Rather, he is to act from his wife 100 percent of the time. This is the meaning
of Rule 1. If the husband would do this, the wife would not have any
complaints, the psychologist would not be involved in mediation, and they would
have peace and happiness together as a foretaste of the true peace and real
happiness of heaven.
But is this
possible? Is it even advisable? Show me where in the Writings this comes from.
And the
answer comes from above: Study the Writings yourself and search and see if you
can find doctrines that teach Rule 1. (See Chapter 9, Sections 3 and 4).
The male
|
Husband MUST DO All the Time |
Husband MUST NEVER DO |
|
always
offer do it for her always
let her decide whenever she wants to always
think of her as perfect for you always
gladly try to perform any request she makes always
allow her to interrupt you (sentence or activity) always
show attention to her always
take her side on anything with anyone always
allow her to complain without restriction or demanding reciprocation always
allow her to throw a temper tantrum by not getting angry at her and not
getting into a bad mood |
never
attach more importance to your point of view than hers never
think your topic is to be handled before hers never
choose something against her wish or preference never
pressure her to go along with you or to change her mind never
want to change her or think it never
prefer to be with someone else (friend, family) or alone (activity) never
complain about her or to her never
show impatience, anger, or disapproval relating to her never act
like you’re not available because busy with something “more important” going
on never
interrupt her when she is talking or doing something (wait for a proper
moment when her focus is available again) |
When you
look at this list does your mind protest and want to
say, But what about the wife? Doesn’t this apply to her too? Shouldn’t they
each be doing these things? Etc.
This desire
to balance the sides for husband and wife comes from nonduality in thinking
about them as equal or in a continuous degrees rather
than discrete. The
What
happens when the husband backslides from these absolutes in the Table? Here are
some of the results:
q
He allows himself to think of her as
a nag or bitch or idiot.
q
He thinks and/or says denigrating
things, criticizing her
q
He feels and shows anger, rage, and
often threatens her
q
He refuses her when she makes
certain requests
q
He
picks and chooses which requests he agrees to depending on his preference,
convenience, or philosophy
q
He asserts his turn to choose and
makes her watch a movie she doesn’t want to
q
He neglects her in many ways and denies
it
q
He is willing to see her stressed or
distressed and not do much about it
q
He wants to retain some independence
in areas he picks, giving her no say in the matter
q
He makes many mistakes that
inconvenience her and feels little repentance or the desire to make up to her
q
He is romantically lukewarm at
times, or frequently
q
He relaxes into male prerogatives,
taking advantage of her obedience
q
He chooses when he is to prevail
regarding choices of residence, career, budget, friends, family, schedules,
recreation, housework
The
nonduality model of marriage destroys the development of conjugial love and
creates the various plagues listed above. In this fallen state the husband is
totally ignorant of his wife’s sweetness and passion, for his negative
behaviors suppress the expression of the conjugial in her, turning her life
into something harsh and unfulfilled. And yet husbands could enjoy this
heavenly sweetness and passion if they only strive to follow Rule 1 and allow
their wife to coach them in the process. It’s a choice they make between
eternal life or spiritual death, between heavenly bliss and infernal misery.
Regeneration is an awesome task and self-witnessing disciplines are useful in
helping the husband to learn to cooperate with his wife. It is this work of
learning to cooperate with the wife that constitutes the arena for his
regeneration. Every error brought to his attention must arouse the desire to
repair and modify so that the progress is cumulative.
It stands
to reason that there is no regeneration for the husband by himself, separate
from his wife. The husband cannot accomplish this task by himself or from
himself, but only from the Lord by his wife. He must appeal to the Lord daily,
hourly, and by the minute, to receive from Him the motivation and persistence
that it takes to succeed (see next page).
|
Self-Witnessing
Exercise for Husbands—fill in today, and a month later, then monthly. Make a
chart at the end of the year. Date:____________________ |
I knew it |
I do it
every day several times |
I did not
know it |
|
YOUR SWEETHEART WIFE WANTS YOU TO: |
|||
|
Watch her
walk away from you with romance in your eyes |
|
|
|
|
Notice
the work she does all the time by mentioning it with appreciation |
|
|
|
|
Appreciate
her style in everything and let her know with each thing separately (“That’s
really cute.” “I really love that.”) |
|
|
|
|
Laugh at
her jokes and wit and show you’re having a great time |
|
|
|
|
Admire
her wisdom, intelligence, and perspective on things |
|
|
|
|
Show that
she is your favorite in everything (person, friend, lover) |
|
|
|
|
Frequently
express enthusiasm and passion for everything about her (“You’re so great!”
“You’re really wonderful.”) |
|
|
|
|
Give her
things (presents, mementos, notes, nicknames, surprises) |
|
|
|
|
Treat her
all the time like she is special |
|
|
|
|
Each time
she needs it: console her, reassure her, protect her, look after her |
|
|
|
|
Look for
opportunities to touch her, hug her, hold hands, etc., (once an hour at least
while you’re together) |
|
|
|
|
Look for
ways of communicating with her when separate (short phone calls, notes left
around for her to find) |
|
|
|
I call
these behaviors “sweetheart rituals.” If it seems that they are somewhat
exaggerated consider how people in love act together. Consider how you were
together in that first flame of passion, even if it only lasted two weeks. It
was a foretaste of heavenly union (CL 275). It is required that we prepare our
mind for heavenly life. This is our regeneration process. The Lord can create a
heavenly mind in us to the extent that we cooperate with Him. This is our
cooperation: that we strive to follow “sweetheart rituals” all the time and
allow ourselves no exceptions, ever. If we fail to follow any particular
sweetheart ritual, we must immediately repent, reform, and modify.
Repent,
reform, and modify. This is our breastplate of honor and virtue from the Lord.
Repent, reform, and modify your behavior towards your sweetheart wife every
minute you spend with her. Consider that conjugial love is not a status you
achieve but a doing you maintain. If an angel husband in heaven would stop
doing their celestial sweetheart rituals, he and his wife would be catapulted
out of heaven, causing her great shame and distress.
Above
all consider that conjugial love is the closest love to the Lord! Conjugial love is above all other
loves and closest to the Lord (CL 222). There is no other way to get close to
the Lord except through conjugial love. If there were another way, then this
other love would be at the top, not conjugial love—and that love is then a
usurper and a robber (John 10:1). Thus, we have no other choice but to learn to
love sweetheart rituals above our own preferred male rituals from inheritance
and hell.
Chapter 2, Section 8
8. The Spiritual Discipline Of Sweetheart Rituals
It is a
natural process for love between partners to start with passion and romance
during the dating period and the special initial phase following the wedding.
Secular psychologists within the scientific orientation of nonduality (or
monism) have tracked the expected decline in “romantic love” setting its waning
at around seven years into the relationship (see Note 18 at end). Popular
culture already had phrase for it--“the seven-year itch.” But careful
observation of one’s own marriage would reveal that husbands begin to decline in
their romantic heat almost immediately after the initial fuse is satiated. And
this comes just days, weeks, or months into the relationship (not years). This
miserable outcome is due to the “scortatory love” that is rooted in the man’s
natural mind (CL 426). Though a man may try to hide it by overt declarations of
faithfulness, his wife or sweetheart, knows it and
perceives it easily, to her deep and utmost distress!
This is the
way with most men since they don’t undergo reformation until adult life, following
years of unregenerate attitudes towards women, sex, and pornography (AE 803; AC
8780; AC 3518:[2]).
By the time the New Church mind begins to
be formed through reformation the person has lived several decades of willing
and thinking scortatory loves, ideas, and behavior, imbibing and absorbing
the cultural environment, loving it and being as one with it. Scortatory
love is roaming love of the sex (CL 112). Only men have it spiritually, thence
biologically, though women can also acquire it into their outward personality
from culture and society. But men have it in their inner character given the
long historical line of the love of dominion over women. Men are born with this
love that turns into roaming love, which is the scortatory
delights of “free love” or casual sex with any female.
Women have
a contrastive inner spiritual inheritance, and therefore biological as well.
Women inherit the spiritual love of marriage (CL 169). This is the inmost
desire women are born with, namely the desire to conjoin from within with a
husband to eternity. This is the woman’s fullness of being and she works
tirelessly to achieve it with a husband who has an inborn aversion for that
union. The is the harsh labor of love that woman was given to accomplish—to try
to unite herself to a husband who inwardly is an angel but outward acts like a
devil. If you think this is an exaggerated idea of my imagination then show
me where is the husband who doesn’t torture his wife?
Who is
torturing his wife and why? Every husband, because he hates conjugial love,
delights in torturing his wife in numerous endless ways—to name just a few
general areas:
How he talks, stands, looks, eats, does
gross things with his body in front of her, neglects the basic things of
sweetheart rituals, yells at her, criticizes her, scares, abuses her,
disregards her opinion, belittles her mind, rejects her, gets angry and enraged
at her, embarrasses her, isn’t loyal to her, doesn’t the details of her life
because he doesn’t care, and so on.
Thus I
stand convicted, along with other husbands. There is no equity excuse possible
for any of us. It is hypocritical and self-serving to say, Well, I don’t do
most of those things, and some of them only sometimes.
It doesn’t matter. What matters is the motivation for “doing it sometimes.”
This motivation is either from heaven or hell, either good or evil (TCR 115; AC
904). There are no in-between motivations. And a single connection to hell that
we maintain voluntarily, reserving for ourselves the right to keep that single
tie to hell, is our total perdition. There is no partial perdition. An angel
cannot survive in heaven if it has a single contact point to hell. You can see
this easily. So now it applies to us here, as well. Every
The Lord
gives her special perception to perceive this angel in her man (CL 166). Behind
the devil, she sees the angel she loves. But how can she get to the angel when
this devil is surrounding him and guarding him? At her intimate approach to
him, he snarls at her, seduces her, abuses her, and abandons her, to start
fresh with another victim. This is the man we are born to enact and live until
our reformation. When the wife is exhausted by her miserable treatment he gives
her, she suddenly comes back to life from within as she sees her man undergo
the struggles of reformation. And she is happy to renew her difficult struggle
for winning conjugial love with this man, who is now undergoing regeneration.
He cannot do it on his own, for when he deserts her for a few hours in one or
another angry state of mind, he reverts to animalhood—harsh, competitive,
self-centered, dishonest, irresponsible, out of balance in everything, lacking
empathy and compassion for anyone, isolated on top of a self-created mountain
of ice and wind storms.
But the
second he turns back to his wife, repenting, apologizing, making up with
animation and sincerity, that very instant he revives from within, he gets to
descend from his icy mountain into her sweet arms and the protection of her
conjugial love, warmth, and healing of wholeness.
These
things happen because they are spiritual necessities, hence biological
realities.
If a man
concentrates his love upon his wife, by shunning adultery as sin, then love
with its potency increases daily; but if men take from that love and consume it
with harlots, conjugial love becomes like chaff, and dies.
[I mentioned] about a woman, that she said, that it is
impossible to love one's wife, because it becomes usual. But the angels said
that she is mistaken; and that what is usual, when love is truly conjugial, is
the plane in which enjoyments form themselves, from
within, as upon a rose bed; and that every separate rose becomes a plane in
which interior enjoyments are formed and variegated, and this to eternity. (SE
6110)
The
Suppressing
our will and accepting His will means that we suffer Him to regenerate us
through the innumerable temptations we are to face, struggle against, and
conquer with His power, not with our own for we have none. We must therefore
consciously ascribe the power to Him, imploring Him that we might accept it,
for He is always willing to give it. We accomplish this not by mere prayer
and by dint of imploring sincerely, with reflection, and many times over, for
this is but the first step and cannot lead to success until we take the
subsequent steps the Lord wants us to take, has commanded us to take. And the
second step is to acknowledge that we need a discipline to learn and to apply,
so that our cooperation with the Lord may be adequate for our continued
regeneration (DP 114).
I may
suggest here the discipline of establishing sweetheart rituals as one area of
illustration. The details I mention may apply variously to particular couples.
This is something that every husband needs to find his way around in his own
relationship—what is appropriate, what is impractical, what seems to work, how
often to perform it, in what specific style, and so on. The things I mention
may serve as samples of what might be considered. Though wives will have a deep
interest in reading this, they will see that it is not addressed to them but to
husbands. It’s the husbands who need to plan, perform, and monitor
sweetheart rituals. The wives will respond and react in their own way and
on their own pace, guided by secret knowledge and
perception they have from the Lord, either consciously or unconsciously.
So the
first principle the husband needs to apply is that it is he that is required to
initiate and perform romantic rituals. He must not make his wife’s response or
reaction a condition for starting and continuing to perform the sweetheart
rituals. His mind must be cast into an absolute duality: I am preparing myself
to become a conjugial husband or I am not. I am doing this in every act or in
none. He must not allow anything in between because that smacks of a
nonduality, of a continuum from slightly or sometimes to often to most of the
time, etc. A discrete jump is required from the natural concept of “conjugal”
to the spiritual concept of “conjugial” (the extra “i” marks the discrete
difference). The
I have spoken
with spirits about the changes of state of man's life, that it is inconstant,
and that he is borne upward and downward, now toward heaven and now toward hell.
But they who suffer themselves to be regenerated are being borne continually
upward, and thus always into more interior heavenly societies. Extension of
sphere into these societies is given by the Lord to those who are being
regenerated, especially to those who are being regenerated by means of
temptations, in which resistance is made to evils and falsities; for the Lord
then fights through angels against the evils and falsities; and in this way the
man is introduced into the societies of these angels, which are more interior
societies; and into whatever societies he has once been introduced, he there
remains; and from this he also receives a more extended and elevated capacity
of perception. (AC 6611)
The
husband’s performances may jump around, this she will learn to live with, but
in the meantime, he must never take back his commitment to conjugial union.
The commitment to one hundred percent sweetheart romance must never relapse
because this is a thing of faith for the
The
performance of sweetheart rituals starts with self-witnessing. We need to make
a list of all the sweetheart rituals we can think of. Many of them are those
that we practiced in the initial phases of the relationship. Some we know from
observing other couples, either in real time or as portrayed in movies and
novels. The list should be lengthened whenever the Lord reveals to the husband
one more ritual he can perform. And so it grows, and with it love between them
and for each other.
1. Sweethearts
Spend All Their Time Together
Observe the
time you spend together. Sweethearts spend as much time together as circumstances
allow. They don’t voluntarily choose activities that do not allow them to be
together. When they are separated by the daily role activities they think about
each other constantly and long to reunite. If both are near phones the man in
love calls up his beloved several times and they “steal” moments from whatever
they are separately engaged in doing at the time. They do not talk about
business or duties but about love, romance, longing, and desire. They hang up
with regret, because they are forced to, not because they want to. Husbands
must practice this approach as a deliberate plan or discipline. It’s
crucial to keep track:
When is the
last time I communicated with her? How many hours and minutes? How many
opportunities for communicating have I let slip by? How many hours and minutes
since the last time I thought of her, longed for her? What else can I do on top
of what I’m already doing? Can I send an email note? Can I bring some surprise
home with me? What words of romance and love do I have prepared for our moment
of reuniting? Etc. etc.
When he
arrives home he doesn’t enact being tired and wanting to be served by his wife.
Instead he enacts being animated and exalted by being reunited with her. He
touches her and holds her and sits close to her, smiling, beaming. He offers to
serve her, to pamper her. He stays on her topics as long as she desires. He
never turns on the TV to shut her up or out. He doesn’t leave her to go play
with men and be with men instead of being with her. None of this comes
naturally. The natural is to hate this, to see it as subservient to women, as
losing manhood, etc. But the spiritual we want to become and are from within,
rejects this anti-woman he-man level of thinking. We can see rationally that
voluntary enactment of sweetheart rituals are from heaven and prepare us for
life in heaven.
Husbands
must take care of the temptation to use workload as an excuse for neglecting
sweetheart rituals. This is easier if one takes up a radical and categorical
orientation with respect to what is always to be on top of one’s workload and
recreation—the sweetheart. She must be the reigning love in the
Depending
on life’s circumstances some couples can spend many hours together every day
and some only a few. Whatever the case is, when they are together the husband
must perform his sweetheart routines hour by hour, and minute by minute. This
is “quality time” together, making the most of it, as the conjugial demands it.
As always, the husband must monitor his actions towards his wife:
How many
times has he smiled and called her sweet names during that period? How many
times has he touched her, kissed her, cuddled her, held
her hand? How many sweet sentences has he spoken to her—complimenting her,
praising her, acknowledging her accomplishments, her loyalty, her beauty, her
sweetness? How many times has he brought her something to enjoy—a drink, a
sweet bite, a flower, a surprise? How many times has he offered, Is there
anything I can do for you, sweetheart? Etc. etc.
Sweetheart
rituals are continuous non-stop performances of conjugial love. When the wife leaves the room and
returns a couple of minutes later, the husband has to take official note of it.
Hi, Sweetheart, you’re back. His body has to demonstrate the readjustment, for it’s one thing for him to lie, sit, stand, or work at
something while he is alone, and a totally different thing to do these things
while she is present. So the ritual of acknowledging her coming back must be
overtly marked by visibly readjusting his body and his focus.
Romantic
love is spoiled and temporarily destroyed by the slightest negativity a husband
lets out in the presence of his wife. His self-witnessing must include the bad
things he does:
How many
times has he frowned in her presence, or worse, has spoken harshly towards her,
or worse, has expressed cold or anger towards her? How many times has he said
NO to her for anything? How many times has he neglected her, caused her to cry,
to feel abandoned, betrayed, unloved, abused? How many
times has made her frustrated, anxious, doubting, intimidated, forced, pressured,
manipulated? Etc. etc.
To the
unregenerate mind these sweetheart rituals may seem exaggerated and impossible
to learn and perform consistently. All sorts of objections present themselves
to the mind to prevent, to impede, to sabotage. Even the committed conjugial
husband may lapse into temptations of doubt and delusions about being unable to
reach such lofty standards of conduct. All this must be overcome by imploring
the Lord and reflecting that one has no choice for there is no other way the Lord
provides for our regeneration and preparedness for heaven. We must compel
ourselves to perform the sweetheart rituals whether we feel like it or not (CL
282). Make your feeling irrelevant in deciding whether to do or not. Do
not allow yourself a choice or an exception. If you fail to perform in any one
instance, then monitor, reflect, repent, repair, and go on. But we must not
fail in our commitment and in our orientation. For this is what drives the
whole thing.
It is primarily
men who adopt simulations of conjugial love or outward shows of friendship for
the sake of peace and tranquility at home. This is owing to their natural
characteristic of doing what they do by an exercise of the intellect. Because
the intellect is a thinking faculty, it occupies itself with various matters
which disturb, distract and trouble their spirit. Consequently, if they were to
find no peace at home, eventually their vital forces would languish, their
inner life would sink almost into a state of death, and thus the health of both
mind and body would be ruined. Men's
minds would be assailed by the fears of these and many other dangers if they
did not find havens of refuge at home with their wives to calm the turmoil of
their intellect.
[2] Besides,
peace and tranquility soothe their minds and dispose them to receive favorably
kindnesses offered by their wives, who spend every effort to dispel from their
minds the clouds which they keenly observe in their husbands. And this also makes their wives' presence
agreeable.
It is apparent
from this that a simulation and seeming display of truly conjugial love for the
sake of peace and tranquility at home is both necessary and useful.
To this we add
the further note that simulations on the part of wives are not the same as
simulations on the part of men. Even if they appear similar to them, they are
expressions of real love, because women are born forms of love for the
understanding of men. They accept their husbands' displays of favor graciously,
therefore, if not in words, still in heart. (CL 285) (see
also CL 282)
This
passage shows that conjugial simulation is taught by the Lord and therefore it
is to be taken as a commandment for husbands. A husband who is angry with
his wife or treats her badly is breaking the Lord’s commandment. There is
no salvation possible when we reject any of the Lord’s commandments. A Divine
commandment doesn’t require perfect performance, for this idea is not from
rational spirituality. A husband cannot take refuge in the idea that no one can
be perfect. The commandment requires first, that we acknowledge it as Divine;
second, that we sincerely try to practice it, and third, that we immediately
repent and reform when we fail to perform it. The Lord commands that we be
perfect, “like the Father in Heaven is perfect” (Matt.
2. The
Commandment Of Conjugial
Simulation
For Husbands: The Commandment of
Conjugial Simulation:
When you
feel positive, act positively.
When you
feel negative, act positively.
Freedom is
to compel our self to follow this commandment. Slavery is to follow it or not
depending on how committed we feel at the time. When we are put off or angry we
don’t feel like acting positively towards our wife. If we then act negatively
we are in slavery to self-love. But if we then compel ourselves to act
positively out of our commitment, we are in freedom. For freedom is to obey the
order imposed by the Lord while slavery is to obey self (AE 774[4]). Slavery
leads to hell, but freedom leads to heaven. Clearly then we are much better off
by obeying this conjugial commandment!
Observe the
various objections that occur to our mind as we consider whether to accept
this:
How do I
know it is a commandment? Where does it say that?
Or: This
can’t be true—it sounds too extreme.
And what
about the wife—does she have to stop nagging and acting negatively towards me?
I’m only
responding to her pushiness and lack of balance. How can I act positively when
I’m seething inside? Haven’t you heard of venting and unhealthy it is to keep
strong emotions inside?
Doesn’t it
count that I almost never lose my temper with her? Wouldn’t this be playing the
hypocrite? How can we ever work on our problems this way? Wouldn’t this stop
all progress? Isn’t it undignified? Couldn’t it be bad for her?
Etc. etc.
These
resistances are natural and stem from our conditioning to equity orientation
discussed in Chapter 9 Section 6. This is a concept from nonduality. The
enslaving nature of it can easily be seen from the perspective of duality.
While equity strives to destroy categorical distinctions between husband and
wife, non-reciprocity strives to maintain the duality into which men and women
are created (CL 90-2). Absolute distinctness must be maintained for every
component of a man that functions analogously in women. For only absolute
distinctness between elements can produce perfection in their unity (DP 4). The
conjugial union exists only in perfection. Equity destroys the conjugial union,
forcing man’s philosophy over women. Conjugial union works if man voluntarily
chooses to do everything for his wife without expecting that she does things
for him. She already is going to do what is necessary for the conjugial union,
but he is not. So he can’t afford to practice equity because it destroys his
ultimate goal of unition with his wife.
Overcoming
all resistances is achieved when the husband first, rejects nonduality (or
equity) and second, adopts non-reciprocity (or duality) as the operating
procedure for himself as husband.
Then
conjugial simulation becomes an essential tool for making progress. Without it
we botch the whole thing right from the start. This is because wives are so
affected by the negativity of their husband that they feel like they’re dying
and they want to die (xx). What’s more, it lingers in their interior mind long
after they are able to recover externally and favor the husband with their
grace and sweetness. These pleasant things they give out despite their
lingering internal injury. And the husband who takes these gifts with delight
is enjoying stolen kisses he does not deserve. He is a thief and robber because
he tries to climb in some other way than what the Lord provides (John 10:1).
And he fails should he persist, and many are those who do.
Therefore
we gain freedom from the slavery of equity and anger the very moment we commit
to non-reciprocity:
“I will always act to please her and I will
not demand that my wife does so too. If I should feel that she is acting
negatively, I will act positively. If I feel that she persists in acting
negatively, I will act positively. If I feel annoyed or mad like hell, I will
act positively. I will be pleasant in face and voice, mild in my speech, quick
in responding when she wants a response, quick in listening when she wants me
to listen. I will not allow myself to think anything negative about her or her
behavior. I will instantly contradict and reject all such thoughts and
conclusions in my mind. I will monitor them carefully so they do not run
themselves off automatically or subconsciously. I will ignore whatever I think
is negative in her attitude or conduct and I will hold before me the positive
that I can see in her everywhere.”
This is
conjugial freedom. This is sanity. This is rationality and spirituality. The
Lord can give it whenever we think and act from His commandment. This is the
freedom of angels, and their peace and bliss (HH 386). Conjugial simulation
acts to absorb the compulsive reactivity in the equity philosophy: eye for an
eye, insult for insult, negativity for negativity, imperfection for
imperfection. When we simulate pleasantness the compulsion to react negatively
is absorbed by the corporeal mind. It is a perceptible experience. I feel it
distinctly and painfully. My interior dialog with myself as it is happening
says:
Wow, it’s
amazing how the explosions just get absorbed and I only feel them for a
fraction of a second. I watch myself go through the motions—I smile and stay
quiet instead of interrupting her. I nod instead of shake my head. I stay close
instead of bouncing away, putting distance between us. I watch my hand reach
towards her and touch her arm or shoulder slightly. She moves away, still
disturbed, heated up. She wants me, she needs me to appease her and put an end
to her misery. How heartless can I be to prolong this for her.
I make myself agree. I think of conciliatory things to say. I do not remain
silent or sullen, passive-aggressive. I reassure her that I am now with her. I
console her by apologizing endlessly and promising profusely. At last I watch
her calm down, as she begins to feel safe again. She is so grateful she has
already forgiven me, but she thinks it wiser not to give me too much praise
because it sometimes blinds me with pride or self-satisfaction (lulls me back
into the ego).
This is
conjugial simulation. It is as far from playing the hypocrite as heaven is from
hell. Conjugial simulation leads to peace between the partners while the
husband catches up to his wife in commitment and love. The wife does not need
conjugial simulation because she is oriented towards internal union while he is
oriented towards external partnership. Everything she does in relation to her
husband is marked by non-reciprocity and duality right from
the word go. If some wives appear not to do this, it is just an outward
illusion, for inwardly they have conjugial union inscribed in their interiors,
in every single element of their interiors, in their willing and thinking.
Hence it is that equity in the husband’s mind is destructive while non-reciprocity
is saving.
When a wife
sees that her man is compelling himself to enact decency and friendship towards
her, she doesn’t think that he is being hypocritical, but brave. She thinks of
him as a hero. Women appreciate a man who is strong enough to lay his male ego
aside and act, not from his own will, but from the woman he loves and respects.
She may hope and trust that his enactment will eventually be his preference and
issue from his love of union with her mind. But in the meantime, she considers
it a good sign that he is willing to enact it out of a love for his religious
commitment. This gives her inner hope that some day her husband will get rid of
the devil and step out and be the angel that she can see within him.
Chapter 2, Section 9
9. Conjugial Intimacy Disciplines
It’s normal
for the religious husband to wonder about the number and gravity of his
sins—his weaknesses and faults, or his long standing stubbornness about
changing parts of his personality for the sake of his wife. There is a
nonduality hidden within this thinking. It is the idea that sins are arranged
on a continuum of gravity, with abominable sins and a lawless life on the one
end, and on the other, these little weaknesses or stubbornness we still hold on
to. After all not even angels are pure and perfect (SE 883). This nonduality
leads to further things allied to it like the balance idea or equity idea (see
Chapter 9 Section 6). The balance idea is the notion that if you have lots of
good things you do and just a few bad things, the good outweigh the bad, and
we’re O.K. spiritually. In other words, our salvation is secured so long as
those little sins don’t get bigger or more numerous. You can see that this
contains nonduality at its core. It denies the absolute duality between committing
sins and not committing them. It further denies the duality of angel and devil
in the idea that angels are not perfectly pure. This is a false idea of what
the Writings say about the personality of angels.
What needs
to be kept in view is that the personality of angels is not their own
personality but the Lord’s Proprium that they borrow (AC 8409). They act from
that Proprium through their independent and free understanding. The conscious
life of human beings is situated in the understanding, even though the cause of
all thinking is in the will. The cause of the thinking of angels is not their
own will but the Lord’s Proprium and will therein. Angels therefore act as-if
from themselves in consciousness but from the Lord’s
Proprium in the will of the angels (HH 591). Clearly then the threefold self of
an angel is entirely pure—their willing, their thinking, and their acting. This
is why angels are called holy. When we take our focus off this idea, we can
then think about the historical biography of an angel since angels and devils
are the people on earth who pass on. We also need to recall that loves are
spiritual substances and the will is a spiritual organ made of these
substances. Whatever you once love, becomes permanent
because its fabric becomes your self like the cellular synapses that make up
your brain. If you cut out the cellular synapses, there is no brain left. In
the same way if you cut out loves from the will there is no will left, and
without that, there is no conscious or voluntary life whatsoever. One cannot
cut out former loves or eliminate them to eternity (DP 78). But they can be put
to sleep or rendered completely inactive if the individual admits in its stead
the Lord’s Proprium and will in it. In this state one cannot act from one’s own
will. It is as if gone forever.
Angels are
people who suffered themselves to be regenerated while
in the physical body. Obviously they were born with hereditary evils they had
to overcome and be reborn and reformed in character. Every angel has had to be
reformed from animal and evil to human and good. The good is being able to love
to act from the Lord’s Proprium. The former evil they now hold in the greatest
aversion, so much so that they would much rather instantly die or disappear
from existence than have even one of their earthly sins back again. This
aversion is so strong that it keeps every former sin or lust in a coma at the
farthest reaches of their biography and influence. They have this powerful
aversion not from themselves but also from the Lord. Clearly then all they have
to do is cleave to the Lord’s Proprium through the love of acting from the
Lord.
You can see
from these considerations that there is an absolute duality between committing
sins and acting from self and not committing them and acting from the Lord.
Therefore
the balance theory of nonduality is false and good deeds do not cancel out bad.
So if you ask this question, you already know the answer:
What about
the really small things like if I don’t floss regularly, or if I have little
hair sticking out of my nose, or bushy eyebrows, or have food spots on my shirt, and act a bit clumsy due to a few extra pounds…—
these little things of anyone’s life. Surely they don’t send people to hell.
It’s not the same thing as being lawless, an adulterer, and being cruel and
avaricious. Where is justice and fairness in this? Etc.
You know
the answer from what was said above about the angels. There is only heaven and
hell for our final lot in life (HH 491). Hell is for those who love to act from
self, while heaven is for those who love to act from the Lord. There is nothing
in between, even though within each discrete degree there is a never ending
continuum of love and its strength and purity. So there are innumerable hells
arranged in order from least grave (highest) to most grave (lowest or deepest).
And there are innumerable heavens from highest (celestial angels) to lowest
(natural-spiritual angels). There is no overlap. Consider what would happen if
you arrive at the stage in your regeneration when you’re entering your heaven
and your conjugial wife is with you. Now you still have with you a few of these
little loves that caused you to have hair sticking our of your nose or ears,
and having bad breath from not flossing regularly and not brushing your tongue.
What is going to happen as you are receiving the Lord’s Proprium in your will?
All the old lusts you now hold in aversion are rendered permanently comatose—except
for those you do not hold in aversion.
And there’s
the big problem.
You have no
protection from the lusts you do not hold in aversion. They are your connection
to hell, either a light hell or a deep hell. Can the Lord’s Proprium enter in
such an unclean will? No. The only other alternative available is that mild
hell you’re still connected to. Out you fall from your heaven into the lower
regions of your mind called the hells. Now you’re in big trouble. Whether or
not you get back to heaven now depends on whether or not you suffer yourself to
give up those little sins. Some who get there do give them up, and some do not
(xx). Friend, don’t take that gamble. Get rid now of the hair sticking out of
your nose and all those other little things that your wife vigilantly warns
against and that you stubbornly continue to ignore.
One reader
responding to an earlier draft of this book wrote:
Bad breath, flossing, sweetheart rituals, etc. This is all excellent stuff. And since I have read it, it’s amazing
how conscientious I have become about these matters. This is great stuff. And I
really enjoy being clean and fresh for my wife. I have even started cleaning
the sink when I get through shaving, wiping my splatters off the mirror when I
get through tooth-brushing, double checking that the toilet seat is down and
clean after I use it, etc. It is something that my wife occasionally comments
on, but which I never pay much attention to. So, thanks for the heads up!
And, oh yes, I
am much more inclined to get ready for her and be there for her when she comes
into the room—shutting off the computer entirely and giving her my focused
attention. I am doing it now, and I feel so good about it!
There are
many such little sins and they are embedded in inherited male stubbornness. It
stands to reason therefore that we should be using a discipline to help us be
efficient in this process. Monitoring what the wife says is the first
essential. Self-witnessing our daily life is the second essential (see Note 20
at end). We need to keep lists of what she says about our little sins and what
we witness ourselves about them. The wife will point out to you the physical
manifestations from what she can notice, but you will point out to yourself the
thoughts that accompany them. You have to catch yourself in the mental sequence
of disregarding and ignoring her. This is where you’ll find the outside form of
your loves. For such as your love is, such is your thinking,
consequently such are you (DLW 368).
I mention
nose hair and flossing in this section, which is called conjugial intimacy,
because it is one of the many unregenerate behaviors adult men retain as if
they were male prerogatives from heaven rather than from hell. Take for
instance flossing regularly, which is necessary for most people to remove the
food between the teeth, which if left there, cause bacteria that destroy the
teeth and create bad breath. You might think that bad breath is not such a big
deal, yet it is so offensive to conjugial union that the Writings mention it as
a legitimate cause for separation in marriage (CL 253). Why? Because
bad breath is offensive to conjugial intimacy. If it is the cause of
some unavoidable medical condition or life situation, the wife can overcome her
revulsion of being close to him, but if it is caused by choice, could the wife
overcome her revulsion? Not in her interiors, but only in her externals. She
can overcome in her interior when it is not a matter of his choice since she
knows that this will disappear in heaven. But if it is by choice, then it
cannot be changed by heaven, thus, she cannot accept it temporarily and
overcome her revulsions.
Take
another example: men get used to shaving in the morning so that they may be
presentable to the world. But if you shave only in the morning, what happens to
your face when you get into bed with your wife at night? Your rough face
offends her tender skin. Is she condemned therefore to sleep with a pineapple
all her life on this earth? The husband who cares about his wife more than the
public will shave at night, before going to bed. The husband who doesn’t care,
can he be in her heaven in the afterlife? If she is of a mentality to withhold
her complaint about some of his little sins the responsibility is on him to
discover them and practice holding them in aversion.
Take
another little sin: clumsiness in close physical contact with the wife. As
couples lie together in physical bodies they are weighted down by gravity. It’s
natural for a man to be clumsy and do things that hurt her physically. He is
heavier than she is, and more muscular. He has to watch his elbows from bumping
into her sensitive parts, especially the breasts. He must take care that his
nails are short and filed so as not to injure her sensitive skin. His hands
must be clean when he approaches her. If he lies against her or on top of her,
he has to maintain muscular control so that he doesn’t weigh
her down anywhere, or make her feel trapped. The point is: these are the
little things that he must monitor and adjust, each
husband in accordance with what is comfortable and pleasant for his wife.
When the
husband kisses his wife in a physical body, what happens to her breath? It is
mostly cut off. He needs to monitor that and become skilled. She will
graciously forgive him for having to learn, but she has to see progress over
time. And this will come only if he has made it into a discipline—which starts
with a religious commitment and continues with progressive self-modification
procedures. Use your rational mind to invent effective ones for yourself. To
help stimulate your awareness, here is a short list of little sins that impede
progress in conjugial union: (see next page)
|
Oral
hygiene (brushing tongue, teeth, flossing) Body
hygiene (cleanliness and odor) Clothes
(old and crumpled) Nudity
(shirtless in public, shorts on the wrong occasion, visibly not wearing
undergarments) Habitually
interrupting the wife who is speaking Ignoring
house cleanliness rules (leaving clothes in the wrong places, not picking up
after self, sloppy food behaviors) |
Accepting
in ourselves the enjoyment of sexually explicit materials Laughing
at scortatory jokes Using
swear words Using
sexist language Saying
disrespectful things about women Communicating
with an ex-girlfriend Embarrassing
the wife in public (talking too loud, yelling, making a scene) Neglecting
repairs she wants done Etc. etc. |
(For a
longer list, see Chapter 9 Section 1)
Chapter 2, Section 10
10. Overcoming Threats To Sweetheart Rituals
Married partners together, or conjugial love, is the very
image and likeness of God (adultery destroys it). Hell is infuriated when those
there perceive the sphere of conjugial love, - from experience, as it were, out
of heaven. When adultery is thought permissible, it exists in endeavor in the
whole body. (SE 6110)
In the
unregenerate mind and prior to reformation, romantic love among marrieds has a
half-life of three to four years, according to research by psychologists
(Hatfield, Elaine and xx). It is gone after seven or eight years, and replaced
by love for duty, loyalty, conscience, avoidance of failure, love for children,
fear of change, and so on. These are external motives in the natural mind in
comparison to romantic love which is more internal, more permanent, and
spiritual. Romantic love is given by the Lord to a man and a woman at the
beginning of their relationship. During this initial and brief period, the
couple experiences the feeling of internal union. The Lord accomplishes this
through connecting their spiritual mind to the angels who are in conjugial love
(xx). How long this special state lasts depends on the couple, almost always on
the man. This is because conjugial love is part of the inner constitution of
women but only of the outer constitution for men (CL 156). And since the outer
constitution of men contains hereditary loves for adultery and promiscuity, the
conjugial love that is there cannot survive for any length of time. It is as if
absent in the mind of men.
Declining
romantic love in marriage is therefore attributable for the most part to
husbands. This is not recognized in secular therapy where the nonduality of
equity reigns in counseling and professional advice-giving (see Chapter 6). In
this case, equity takes the form of “they both share the blame.” I watch the
many TV programs that feature couples therapy or counseling by the most popular
health professionals in the nation. What strikes me each time is how the
husband gets away with silence and hiding behind the chair, while the wife is
up front taking all the criticism and advice from the experts. This is equally
true with the female experts. The wife is always picked as the focus of what’s
wrong with the union. She is the one who is told to lower her demands, to
accept him as he is, or to change her approach to him. Why this bias? Because
this is a man’s world, a male oriented intellectual climate (see Chapter 9
Sections 1 and 2).
This
unregenerate orientation and motivational climate hates the conjugial
and only tolerates the conjugal. “Conjugial” means an internal union in
accordance with the reciprocally constructed spiritual constitution of the
husband and wife. In the conjugial, the husband learns to love to act from the
wife more than from himself (see Chapter 9 Sections 1
and 2). This motivation creates the internal bond between husband and wife. But
the unregenerate man is inherently opposed to acting from his wife. He wants to
act from himself only. This he calls freedom. Hence the wife can only establish
an external “conjugal” bond with a husband who remains in that state.
To live by
the Doctrine of Conjugial Love is to be regenerated and this lengthy
psychobiological process involves engineering a reversal of the normal
declining romantic love. As time passes by the man erodes the initial romantic
love until nothing is left but external friendship, mutual aid, and social
company. These external and convenient benefits do not contain conjugial love
in the internal which remains closed until the husband reforms and begins
regeneration. Using spiritual disciplines to help our regeneration is an
effective way for husbands to cooperate with the Lord in their regeneration.
This is required since regeneration is proportional to this conscious and
willing cooperation (DP 114).
Sweetheart
rituals were described above as illustrations of this cooperation. To perform
the sweetheart rituals effectively we need to understand and struggle against
many threats from within. The corporeal mind hates non-reciprocity and loves
equity (see Chapter 9 Section 6). It wants very much to hold on to male
prerogatives. Male superiority feels good, it’s nice, it’s
so convenient. Besides, it’s society. It’s the way it is. Etc. Even more
intense resistance wells up when the discipline is applied to the little things
of life that are hardly ever mentioned in divorces or psychology books for
marital relationships.
For instance,
linguists and sociologists have analyzed video and audio records of
interactions between men and women (Tannen xx; Lakoff xx). Men choose most of
the topics that get discussed. Men interrupt twice as much as they are
interrupted. Men talk longer stretches, often hogging the conversational
minutes. More interiorly, men show anger, refuse requests, and criticize more
than women. Men do almost all the violence and abuse. Men tend to quit “working
on the relationship” while women try to hold on. Women are loyal and faithful,
men break the promise and cheat. Inwardly men are adulterous, promiscuous, and
consumers of pornography. (See Chapter 7 Section 4).
Men are
proud of being issue oriented and task involved when they talk to women. They
hide from themselves the obvious fact that they force the relationship to
remain external and defeat the woman’s endeavor to develop an internal union. A
woman is relationship oriented since it’s so clear to her that the internal
relationship is the only one that is permanent and successful. They feel that
they are up against a brick wall in his will when he repeatedly stays focused
on the issue or task and refuses her requests that he switch orientation to the
relationship. She wants to resolve feelings; he wants to avoid that. Thus they
struggle against each other. The struggle can stop only when he gives in, for
she can never give in and still save the relationship. Giving
in to her means to begin acting from her will, reasoning, and goals.
This restores the internal state of conjugial preparation for celestial union,
which is perfect (CL 61). Then for the first the man becomes a human and is no
longer a mere animal. The beginning of the human in him is the rational from
the Heavenly Doctrine.
Consider
how men go along with male prerogatives. They are content in playing third or
fourth fiddle in the marital orchestra of raising children, running the
household, and managing social relationships. If compelled by equity norms to
“help around the house” husbands will try to make it as little as possible
without ruining their reputation of fair-mindedness. Also, they do not readily
take full responsibility of even the share they agree to. Forgetting to take
out the garbage, he gets sullen when she reminds him, and then still doesn’t do
it, waiting for another reminder. This is a representative of man’s involvement
in household partnership. Another is to insist on doing things according to
their own standards, even if it fails the standards of the wife. There is no honest owning up to their utter refusal to do things
from the wife’s standards.
Once again,
monitor the objections you feel swelling within you as you contemplate what is
being said here.
What about
my wife? Why should she do things from her standards instead of mine? Why do I
have to do things from her standards while she gets to do things from her
standards? Where is the logic in this?
Insisting
on equality in all things in the husband /wife relationship destroys the
conjugial union. This union is based on fundamental, discrete, and eternal
differences between men and women. This is what we mean by “duality.” Remember
that women love the bonds of marriage, and constantly strive to establish an
internal union with their husbands. This effort is from the Lord along with a
perception of how to bring this about. Men have no such perception and
therefore must trust the wife’s insight about their relationship. Even though
this may seem ‘one-sided’ in the wife’s favor, it’s the way the Lord has
arranged it. We can choose to resist His Providence concerning marriage, and
never realize our conjugial potential. Or we can accept this miraculous
provision with gratitude and enter more and more deeply into the eternal, ever
unfolding delights of conjugial love.
In our
daily study of the Heavenly Doctrine the Lord gives us the higher understanding
by which we can clearly see that in a conjugial union husbands always act from
the wife. The
moment they stop, they fall out of conjugial union, to their great distress
(xx). It’s only during the period of reformation and early regeneration that we
doubt the Divine requirement of acting from the wife. After that we can see it
constantly before our mind because it becomes an orientation. Sweetheart
rituals and conjugial simulation, as discussed above, maintain this orientation
on a permanent basis. What makes these disciplines spiritual is the motive of
conjugial love. Anything done consciously from this motive is spiritual to the
extent that our idea of conjugial love is rational rather than natural. And it
is rational to the extent that we think and will according to Doctrine that is
in our understanding from the daily study of the Writings.
A man cannot be withdrawn from evils and falsities except by
means of the truths and goods that are with him from the Word (AC 9468)
Self-witnessing
is a necessary activity to detect male prerogatives in the little things we do
since childhood and so automatically that it’s easy to deny to ourselves that
we do them. This self-subterfuge cannot stand against self-monitoring motivated
by spiritual Doctrine. The Lord opens our eyes to see them and waits for us to
reject them and at last to hold them in aversion. Then He liberates us from
these natural plagues in our character. To illustrate, I’ve observed in many
ways how the culture of male prerogatives exerts a bear’s hold on my physical
behavior in the presence of my wife. One particular practice is especially
distressing to wives and puts a strangle hold on conjugial development. I will
discuss it under the topic of turning cold in the body.
Chapter 2, Section 11
11. How To Avoid Turning Cold Against The Wife
When an
unregenerate man is exposed to his wife’s conjugial heat he feels seared and
beaten down. This is in his internal mind of which he may not know much. In his
conscious lower mind he feels it as resistance, anger, hate, resentment, and
the desire to retaliate, lash back, break free. This
is the source of so much wife abuse by husbands. They perform abuse according
to their sub-culture and station in life, some physically violent and others
mentally and treacherously by domination and scheming. Male prerogatives are
also used as weapons to keep women in an external rather than internal
relationship to themselves. To allow an internal relationship is threatening to
a man because it feels like he has to give up all his power, not just some of
it, or half of it, but all of it. This is because the wife’s conjugial heat
takes over his whole being and consumes him as a single individual who can have
an independent life of his own.
The only
thing that can protect him from the excruciating pain is his doctrinal
commitment, and then only to the extent that he applies it to any situation. To
the extent that his commitment wobbles to that extent his mind will be invaded
by conjugial cold (CL 241). His body and his behavior will play out all the
forms of destructive negativity. As she talks to him the cold in him gets him
to turn away from her and to increase the distance between them. He will not
look at her, and when he does, he will avoid her eyes. All his enthusiasm for
her is gone. He doesn’t find her charming and entertaining. Her ideas are all
wrong and contrary to his. He can hardly stand her, and often he loses control
and acts violently or with open derision and lack of respect. When she talks
and he nods at her he will reduce the frequency and amplitude of the movement.
His “Mm. Mm.” is intended to withhold more, lest she go on longer. He hates her
and is in rebellious suffering. He refuses her, denies her, suppresses her,
starves her with lack of affection and legitimization, the things she craves
the most from him in that sorry state. He makes her furious, drives her
mercilessly to lose emotional control of herself. She does and feels humiliated,
miserable, defeated. He then feels victorious, the victory of
hell which is his destruction. Over and over again he performs this
interaction until all is destroyed. What then remains is an external
relationship in which the internal is closed.
As this
marital devastation is happening he is given by the Lord numerous opportunities
to witness the atrocious negativity in himself so that
he may become aware of all its little details, and consciously reject them one
by one, and over and over again since they occur in numerous forms and
variations. It is a gradual process he must suffer himself to go through, if he
wants to be saved.
Conjugial
cold descending into the husband’s body shows to the wife as his sullen silence
and slow down of his reactions to her. She sees him becoming less reactive,
less animated to her. It’s as if he turns into dry wood (xx). There is a
calcification of his demonstrations of love for her. She shudders at the
coldness billowing out from the hell of hatred he is in. It is his inherited
hatred of conjugial heat, a heat that strives mightily to eliminate his
independent willing. She does everything to get him to will from her so that
his affections are filled with her all. She must be the all in all in his will
and there must be nothing left of his own unregenerate scortatory will. It is
not a before-after continuum like a physical makeover. It is a discrete
ascension to a higher place in his mid where the Lord must create from scratch
a new conscience, a new human character. This new creation is the conjoint
self:
wife
willing from the Lord (xx), husband willing from the wife (xx), and the two each arranging their
independent understanding in accordance with their will.
It is the
Lord who wills in such a husband, through his wife, and this is what creates
their perfect celestial union. This is “the man” for the sake of whom the Lord
created all things in heaven and earth.
Desiring in my
thought to learn about the marriages of the most ancients, I looked now at the
husband, now at his wife, and in their faces I observed the unity, as it were,
of their souls. So I said, "You two are one." The man replied:
"We are one; her life is in me and mine in her. We are two bodies but one
soul. The union between us is like the union of the two tents in the breast
which are called heart and lungs, she being my heart and I her lungs. But here,
by heart we mean love and by lungs wisdom. Thus she is the love of my wisdom
and I am the wisdom of her love. Therefore her love veils my wisdom from without,
and my wisdom is in her love from within. Hence, as you said, the appearance in
our faces of the unity of our souls." (CL 75:5)
Here it is
said by the angel husband that conjugial union exists when “she is my heart and
I her lungs.” When a husband learns to love to act from his wife more than from
himself, then the wife is his heart, and he is her lungs, that is, the love of
his wisdom. To be “two bodies but one soul” refers to the conjoint self.
A husband
who read an earlier draft shared this section with his wife. He wrote down her
reaction and e-mailed it to me:
When the wife
is in tune with the Lord, and the Lord is speaking to her heart, she conveys
that to her husband. He must listen and interpret what she says. He must strive
to see the good in what she is saying, and hear it as ‘she means to help me.’
He then uses this information to examine himself and to grow from it. But he
must formulate it for himself in his understanding and determine how it will
impact his life. He then puts it into his will. It is his will—his new will
(not her will) that is being developed. This is what is meant by the words ‘She
is my heart.’ The Lord speaks to the woman’s heart and she conveys that to her
husband. She is his pipeline to God—through her heart, through her heart
message. The heart message does not always have words—that the task of the
understanding. And that’s how the man develops his new will.
1. The Fallacy That Men Want Sex More Than Women
Today I
happened to come across a Marriage Seminar program on a Christian TV channel, showing
couples sitting in the audience. If I may reconstruct some of what the leader
said, it would go as follows:
What we need to understand is that a man and a woman are
different. A recent national survey asked women how important to her was sex,
and she ranked it as number 13, with gardening as number 12 [audience laughter].
Now you ask any man and he’ll rank sex as the number one on the list, or number
two or three, but it’s always up there with the highest. A man will say to his
wife, Honey, let’s have sex, and she’ll say, What we
need is being close, holding each other, snuggling. The man answers, Honey,
what we need is sex. And she says, What we need is to
sit down, get ourselves comfortable, have a conversation, relax, put on music,
talk some more. And he says, What we need is sex. [audience laughs].
You see a man is different from a woman. That’s just the way
it is. A man wants to have sex every time, every day, whenever. But a woman
wants closeness, and just holding, and intimacy. A man has to respect that.
Etc.
What’s
terribly wrong with this attitude is that it makes it out to be as if men want
sex while women do not, or that women are less interested in sex than men, and that
this is a biological difference. The opposite is the case, as can be shown from
the Writings. This false notion of men wanting sex and women not so much or not
at all, is a legend invented by men who are motivated
to punish women in one way or another. The fact is that men hate the conjugial
sphere and are excited by the scortatory sphere of roaming lust, which is a
purely corporeal affection. The truth is that all the sex in the world comes
from women, not men (xx). That is, all the desire and motive for sex is
initiated by women, and men have none of it except from women.
Swedenborg
reports a fascinating scientific experiment he was given to perform in the spiritual
world (xx). He was talking to angel husbands who doubted this truth that sexual
interest and desire originates in their wife, not in themselves. Higher angels
then approached by the Lord’s permission, and the sphere of women was removed
from the men. They felt instantly different. They had absolutely no sexual
desire, no interest in women. They got so disturbed at this that the angels
immediately restored the sphere of the wife to each angel husband. Immediately
that this was done they felt relieved, sensing their sexuality once more.
This
experiment proves that sex originates from women, and that men have none of it
unless they get it from women. You can see how wrong and hurtful the idea is
that men want sex all the time while women do not. In a conversation with angel
wives, Swedenborg was told by them that they hide this truth from their husband
(xx). Since in this spiritual society the husbands were spiritual-natural, they
did not distinguish between some appearances and the truth within those
appearances. The Writings explain that husbands from higher spiritual societies who possess spiritual-rational ideas, and celestial
ideas about the wife and sex, know the truth from the Word that all their sexual
feelings originate from their wife. And this knowledge does not disturb them as
it does those husbands in the lower societies who think with spiritual-natural
ideas. On the contrary, the idea that all their sexual feelings originate from
the wife, makes their wife even more precious to their mind.
How then
are we to explain the natural appearances that men want sex more than women
want it? There are at least four reasons for this that we can find in the
Writings:
1) women playing hard to get on account of the men’s impotence
otherwise
2) men lusting for scortatory sex but turning cold to their wife
3) women needing to be prepared, but not men
4) women’s preparation requires inward friendship and trust
Men’s natural
desire to have a woman increases as access to her is denied, and decreases as
it is allowed (xx). This attitude is hereditary and infernal, and hates the
sphere of conjugial love, that is, sex with only one of the other sex.
Eventually this attitude leads to impotence and a dislike, and even hatred, for
the sphere of women generally, for whom they no longer feel any desire or friendship.
Women have learned that if they resist the man’s advances, he gets more hot and wants her even more. But as soon as he can have
what he wants freely and any time, he loses sexual interest in that woman. This
is the pattern of an unregenerate man (xx). As a result, women play hard to get
to prevent their man from turning cold toward them (xx). This maintains the
false legend that men want sex more than women do.
Men’s
sexual pattern is like a firing rocket, quickly enflamed, explosive, and short
lasting (xx). But a woman’s sexual pattern is from inward out, and so more like
the slow steady rising of leavened dough under heat (xx). Women need extensive
preparation for receiving her man into herself. She must first feel close to
him by means of affections of trust, friendship, and liking. Her sexual
feelings begin in her chest and gradually descend towards the waste and hip. To
the extent that the man is then willing, to that extent she is eager to receive
him. A man must therefore suppress and inhibit his natural explosive tendency
that starts directly in his groin and remains there until consummated or
exhausted. Since men are regularly abusive to their women, it is difficult for
women to be adequately prepared. The men then falsely interpret this slowness
as disinterest or reluctance, giving the false appearance that a man wants sex more than a woman.
Unregenerate
husbands are unwilling to give their wife adequate preparation for sex. To
perform this duty properly would require that a man act from his wife’s affections, and this is what he hates the most to do. Hence he
turns cold when he sees what the wife wants and needs, unwilling to grant it to
her. Women’s responsibilities outside the sphere of domestic uses increases
stress that must first be relieved by the husband before she can receive him
within her in an appropriate and genuine union. The husband has to accept his responsibility
in relieving the wife’s stress that originate from her
forensic duties outside the home. Only after this stress is relieved, can he
begin to prepare her for sexual union. Pampering and massage, food and laughter,
pleasant surprises, romantic themes, being charming and gallant—these are the preliminary
methods a husband needs to use before he can even begin to prepare his wife for
sexual union. To get her involved in sex before this kind of adequate
preparation is a kind of marital rape. The result is that she feels used and
discarded by the man who says he loves her.
Also, men
are verbally abusive to their wife on a regular daily basis, and afterwards are
unwilling to make up for it properly. As a result she carries the disturbance within
her for a long time until it eventually diminishes and vanishes, which takes a
long time given the spiritual biology of women. While this is going on they
cannot be adequately prepared for sex since for them, sex begins in the bosom
with friendship, trust, and respect. This sexual biology of the wife is created
by the Lord for the sake of her husband, since this is what a man needs in
order to be able to be conjoined to the wife. Men must therefore honor this
biology as something holy from the Lord and must compel themselves to give
their wife adequate and proper preparation for sex. The truth is that women
crave sex all the time and pray to the Lord that their husband would finally
“get it” and figure out what they need to do to prepare the women for this
physically healing and spiritually regenerating treatment. Angel couples have
sex every day all night since they cannot prevent themselves from it, such is
the irresistible attraction for inward unity between conjugial partners, and
this irresistible inward attraction they have for each other has to exteriorize
as sex when they are alone together. (xx).
Love of the married partner does not result from the sexual
embrace, as with adulterers, but the sexual embrace from the love of the
partner; so that the love of the partner does not depend on the fire of that
organ, but the reverse. The love of the partner is full of delights,
irrespective of sexual intercourse, and is a delightful dwelling together.
Between that love apart from the sexual embrace, and the sexual embrace itself,
there is a determination, just as there is between that which a man thinks from
the will, which is intention, and act, or speech. Between these, intervenes determination, which is as it were the opening of
the mind to doing a thing, like the opening of a door. (SE 6110)
Angelic sex
in heaven, and likewise conjugial sex on earth, is a rational love, not
sensuous or corporeal. It starts from above the waist as intimacy and
friendship towards each other, and only then descends below the waist.
How wrong
are those who think that sex and rationality are opposites, or even,
independent, when the truth is that conjugial love, and all the sex that flows
from it, is necessarily spiritual-rational. This is proven in many ways,
rationally and empirically, in Swedenborg’s book titled Conjugial Love (CL).
Chapter 2, Section 12
12. Spiritual Psychobiology Of The Conjoint Self
When a
husband refuses to act from his independent self, there is born the conjoint
self in his spiritual mind and in the spiritual mind of his wife. This new
birth is from the Lord through the angels and consists in the opening or
activation of the spiritual mind which until then was not a part of our own
mind. Husband and wife now act from the common conjoint self they share in the
spiritual union. It is now only that their marriage is first made spiritual.
Until then, it was natural, regardless of the couple’s religious involvement in
the
This
“acting from his wife’s will” is acting into his own understanding which
remains totally free and independent. It is only his will that is substituted
for his wife’s will. This way the two make a one (CL 157).
It would not be so if his wife’s will were to act into his corporeal mind and
body. He would then be a slave to her and have no will and understanding of his
own. Thus he would be a zombie not a free human being. And zombies cannot be in
heaven. But he retains his maximum freedom when he chooses freely out of his
own love and understanding. And he can choose to act from his own will or to
act from the will of his wife through his understanding. “It is the
understanding which acts from the will, not the will which acts by means of the
understanding.” (TCR 105)
It is the husband’s conscious understanding
that acts in conjugial union, not the wife’s will by means of his understanding
(which would turn him into a zombie). Clearly the conjoint self is possible only if the husband
loves to act from his wife’s will more than to act from his own independent
will. For if he doesn’t love it more, he cannot choose to act from it, for love
leads us to act in accordance with it, and this in an absolute sense in the
afterlife. Everything therefore hangs on this: the husband’s persistent
religious motive to strive to make this new love his actual love.
To love to
act from the spouse is the internal union of conjugial love. The wife by
nativity or spiritual psychobiology already loves this more than she loves
acting from herself as an independent individual. Therefore the pace of growing
in the internal marriage union is set by the slower pace of the husband who is
born to be licentious and promiscuous. He has to be willing to give up these
unclean delights and receive far greater delights, but which he cannot actually
see yet.
It’s
important to maintain the absolute duality between the understanding and the
will, in the same way that the body must maintain the dual function of heart
and lungs in order for it to work as a unity (DLW 407). When a man loses his
independence and freedom in his thinking he is no longer free or human. This is
because rationality only occurs in freedom. Domination of one over the other
removes freedom of thought. This is why a wife cannot force a man into
conjugial union. If she has the persuasive power to remove his freedom and
independence of thinking she will still not be in a conjugial relationship with
him. Women know this from within and so do not attempt it, for the most part
(xx CL 291[?]). Acting from the wife is therefore acting from her will through
his independent and free understanding. The result is that his understanding
gradually becomes realigned so as to be in conformity with her will.
This
process is gradual and cumulative over time so that a discipline is required in
the meantime, as was suggested with sweetheart rituals and conjugial
simulations. The husband compels himself to act outwardly from the wife in conformity
to her standards and requests, while internally he feels resistance and
negativity towards her. Thus he makes progress until at one point his free and
independent understanding is in full agreement with his acting from her. He is
then a reformed husband and capable of being prepared further for conjugial
union. From then on it’s easy in comparison because the wife’s conjugial heat
no longer burns him. He is no longer cold but warm and her heat feels sweet and
blissful.
Act precedes,
man's willing follows; for that which a man does from the understanding, he at
last does from the will, and finally puts it on as a habit; and it is then
instilled in his rational or internal man. And when it has been instilled in
this, the man no longer does good from truth, but from good; for he then begins
to perceive therein somewhat of blessedness, and as it were somewhat of heaven.
This remains with him after death, and by means of it he is uplifted into
heaven by the Lord. (AC 4353)
The idea of
a “conjoint self” is extremely helpful to husbands. It helps them rationally
see how they need to change to become conjugial. During reformation and at the
beginning of one’s regeneration struggles the mind is infested with submerged
nondualities, especially in relation to women and one’s wife. Men inherit an enormous gender arrogance and then culture chisels it
into a system of male prerogatives and cruelties against women. Men treat women
as an inferior caste to themselves. Some men learn to hide this orientation and
cover it up with all sorts of superficial niceties in order to get their
pleasure with women and dominate them, use them for all sorts of purposes
throughout life. Other men do not hide their disdain and hatred of women and
show it in various vulgar, stupid, and abusive way.
New Church men start at this level, as everyone else.
It stands
to reason that a spiritual discipline is going to help a husband to as-of-self
extricate himself from this sink hole of nondualities that oppose the dualities
that the Lord is endeavoring to establish in him. A man’s feeling of gender
superiority is a nonduality in disguise. It places man and woman on continuum
of traits like strength, rationality, stability, entitlements, independence,
precedence, etc., and judges men to be on the high end and women on the low
end. Once in a while they admit that a few men are effeminate and cowards—not
real men. Also, that a few women are as capable as most men—though the best are
still men. You can see that this is a nonduality, rigged to promote the
domination of women by men.
The
The
discipline of building up a conjugial self gives the man a fantastic
opportunity to train himself to love acting from the wife (see Chapter 9
Sections 1 and 2). He can see rationally that there is his normal regular self
full of woman-hatred and his new conjoint self that is formed not by him, not
by society, but by the Lord through heaven. The conjoint self is conjugial,
hence celestial, hence genuinely human, holy because
it is the Lord’s Proprium that rules in it. The conjoint self is built up
gradually to the extent that the husband learns to love acting from his wife.
After the husband officially declares his commitment to the conjoint self as a
religious discipline, there come various phases of combat he must engage in and
overcome (TCR 587). The initial phases are combats against all the nondualities
that justify gender superiority in the man’s mind.
For example
a husband will stake out certain areas of activity and either openly or by dire
implications, will persuade his wife to allow him independence in those areas.
This stubborn stance is maintained despite the husband’s cooperativeness and
even pleasantness in those other areas where he allows his wife to “meddle” or
“butt in” as they disrespectfully put it. Again this is a nonduality that
becomes a stumbling block to any progress whatsoever in building up the
conjoint self. The man wants to make this into a continuum measured by
percentages, as he says to his wife in his head: “I will give you 95 percent of
my life—which is a lot more than most men give their wives. But 5 percent I
need to keep so that something of myself is left that
I can recognize.” And when the list is made, it is obvious that it is a giant
heap whose tip only may be said to be 5 percent of the total.
The
conjoint self is not a percentage of traits of mixed origin. It is entirely
made up of traits of conjoint origin only. There is a categorical and absolute
duality between a man’s self and the conjoint self. No portion or fiber in the
conjoint self can be built that is not from this one source: An act performed
from the husband’s love to act from his wife more than from himself. Any act
that doesn’t have this love in it is excluded by necessity. Clearly, no gender
superiority is possible in the conjoint self, not a single one.
At first we
simulate our behaviors to look like we’re acting in harmony with the wife’s known
wishes, expectations, and requests. Privately, we don’t like it even as we
enact the conjugial simulation (see Chapter 6 Section 7). But we compel
ourselves to continue, to not break form, from a religious motive that is far
higher and stronger than the inherited nondualities in our mind. We reaffirm to
ourselves that we do this, or we go to hell. No other motive can be above this.
So this vanquishes all other motives. If you don’t have this motive, you better
acquire it if you desire heaven more than hell. This motive will deliver you
from hell and lead you to heaven.
The
religious motive in the conjoint self is the power that keeps it growing.
The areas
of self staked out as “They stay mine” are numerous for husbands:
q
Family—parents, joint children,
children from a prior marriage
q
Friends—childhood buddies, best
friend, the man who saved my life, drinking buddies, sports team members, out
of town visitors, etc.
q
Hobbies—weekly golf, chat room,
recreation, entertainment, sports, etc.
q
Personality traits related to
Politics and Profession
q
Etc. etc.
1. Conjugial
Husbands Are Loyal To The Wife
The
conjoint self has no area of independence because this is contrary to the
absolute duality between independent self and conjoint self. A mixture or
commingling is not allowed by the Lord as it would be most injurious (xx). All
the husband’s loyalties must be subordinated to the supreme loyalty to his
wife. This is the Lord’s Commandment that the man “cleave
to the wife” (Gen. 2:24). The husband needs to love this above all other
things: To act from his wife rather than from himself. This is why I call it
the supreme loyalty. This loyalty of the husband for the wife is the same as
the loyalty he has for the Lord. The loyalty he has for the Lord remains in his
natural mind unless it is practiced and applied to those things the Lord
designates and commands (xx). And the Lord designates conjugial love as the
highest of all loves (CL 222) and commands the man to cleave to his wife and to
be one flesh with her, that is one mind (CL 278).
Hence it is that his supreme loyalty to the wife is actually his supreme
loyalty to the Lord. And in no other way can the husband make the Lord supreme
in his love and be what He calls “my friend” (xx).
The
attitude of “don’t try to change me” and “don’t try to change him” is heard
everywhere as advice given to women by health professionals and social gurus.
Women are so intimidated and influenced by this anti-conjugial intellectual
atmosphere that they begin to doubt themselves and their true role. And the
situation is so rigged that when the wife eases up on her conjugial role, he
appears to improve, their relationship is lighter and smoother and he is more
pleasant to live with. This result tends to reinforce in her mind the
hypothesis that a man has to have his portion of independence and rigidity in
certain areas, since that’s how they come and that’s how they are. But this is
not so. The wife must not give one inch in the battle against her husband’s
ego, in the battle for the conjoint self. For without this, she doesn’t walk
away with him and into heaven. She will have to do that with another, when she
gets there (xx).
The wife
has one powerful tool to work with: her husband’s religion. I don’t
think it can be done any other way. Religion occupies the highest place in the
human mind (TCR 601), therefore it rules all motives
beneath it. If the religious motive is not invoked and held before the husband
constantly and without let up, what other power or force is there to overcome
his fully corrupted mind? He will then win most of the battles, but lose the
war in the end. Without the wife, the husband cannot regenerate, as shown
repeatedly throughout this article. He either acts from the wife or from
himself. When he acts from the wife, the conjoint self is built up, and when he
acts from self, the conjoint self is being destroyed. Whatever conjoint self
can be built up, that is the angelic spirit-body that lives in heaven. To the
extent that the husband reserves and puts aside anything about himself for
himself and by himself, and loves it, to that extent he is incapable of living
in his conjoint self, hence heaven. This is because a love you take with you
into the afterlife cannot be removed (DP 277a).
We should
all carefully ponder this, and hold the thought before us every hour of the
day. Thus can we be continually in the Presence of the Lord.
The
discipline of conjoint self requires our full attention. The wife needs our
help in her awesome task as personality coach to her husband. First, we must
continually legitimize this role in her mind by thanking her for doing it on a
daily and hourly basis. Tell her the truth you believe, namely, that without
her doing this you cannot make it (to heaven, that
is). Tell her this is your highest religion. Only this declaration repeatedly
made can fully reassure her. Allow her to use this declaration against you, so
that she can remind you in some situation where you’re giving her a hard time:
“Husband, are you now denying your religion?” She must have this tool to
influence you and hold it over your head, or else you will find ways of
defeating her. So this is first.
Second, you
need to help her against yourself. Give her the information she needs about
your thoughts so she can use those against you. She cannot read your thoughts,
she can only sense and perceive your affections, whether they are for her or
against her. So you need to tell her what you’re thinking about the situation
at issue. Then you need to listen what she says about what you tell her. She
will not like what you think. She will want to have you think in accordance
with how she thinks, and how she thinks you should think. This is your
lifeline, your narrow door, where you must end up. Don’t waste her time and
energy by arguing about it. She will never change her mind. You can only wear
her down so she can’t oppose you for awhile. So tell yourself to make your
objections brief and mild, then switch. Switch
instantly and fully, not by half steps. I found it much easier to go over her side
in one categorical jump, not in gradual increments. She will appreciate it and
love you for it. Then you can experience the sweetness of your conjugial
wife—the deepest softest most intelligent thing imaginable, and beyond.
One day my
wife mentioned that when she expresses concern about her long list of things to
get through, I never say, “Anything I can do for you, honey?” I was shocked at
myself, feeling convicted by the truth of her remark. I resolved to say this
sentence to her every day, “Anything I can do for you today, sweetheart?” That
was my reformation regarding this area of my life. In the first phase of my
regeneration regarding this portion of my character, I noticed a furious debate
in my mind by the many spokespersons around the conference table of the selves.
“But I don’t feel like offering my help. I’m really busy today.” Or, “It’s
O.K., she can get through her list, there is no pressure. She doesn’t really
need my help. We each have got our own list of tasks to get through.” Etc. I had
to merely compel myself to ignore all of this drivel and force a smile on my
face, and to assume a pleasant voice, and say it. My heart would palpitate
during the one-second delay of her answer. I thought, “Maybe she’ll say, Oh, it’s O.K. honey. Thanks for the offer.” But instead, I heard
the dreaded sentence, “Yes, as a matter of fact there is something.” My heart
sank into my socks, and I compelled myself to keep smiling and say out loud,
“Sure, honey. What is it?”
Almost
always, after she made her requests, I had occasion to say to myself, “That’s it? That sounds like very little. I can do
that in less than a hour, then I can get back to my
computer.” As I get through the task I reflect on my reluctance, my feeling of
doom and despair at such a little thing as helping my wife out with her list of
tasks. After all, what are these tasks on her list? They are things that belong
to our domestic life. What gives me the right to unilaterally allocate tasks
she is to do, and tasks I am to do. Who elected me
leader? What is my warrant for ranking “my work” as having priority over “her
domestic work.” This idea is from the unregenerate
self in which the man is dominant and decides where the equity line is (see
Chapter 9, Section 6). Yes, I recognize it. It is my downfall. I have again
departed from the Lord’s Presence, turning my head away, towards myself, which
is allied with the hells.
Not
surprisingly, when I complete the tasks, I can see more clearly why it was the
right thing for me to do. By doing them as a “volunteer” for “her tasks” our
relationship is elevated to the conjoint self. This is what she wants most out
of it.
But it
doesn’t go smoothly all the time. One day she says, “Can you do the laundry? I
won’t have time and we’ll need the pajamas tonight.” I hear my voice in a
reassuring tone, “Sure babe, anything for you.” I make a mental note, “Better
not forget!” At some point I have to get up from the computer and go do the
laundry. I have to make sure I check the pockets for tissue paper, and the bright
things for any spots that need to be treated. I have to make sure I hear the
dryer buzz so as to fold the clothes while they’re still warm (so they don’t
crease!). I have to remind myself to fold them the way she does it, therefore
the way she likes it. She has reasons for everything—and I acknowledge that
they are rational. I’m getting impatient as I fold the clothes and it takes
longer to smooth them out before folding. I have to repeat things.
I’m getting
enraged inside. Rebellious. Why do I have to do this?
Who cares if they’re creased—they’re just for bed. Etc. I recognize the
symptoms of rebellion against the conjugial. Our cat Minsky comes around,
watching me fold the clothes. He seems to be saying to me: “Are you going to
come to the dish with me afterwards?” I ignore him in my rage, or worse: I
think, “No way are you getting food. Not again. I’m busy now. No time for
play.” I tell myself to repent and some serenity comes back as I continue
folding. The Lord wants me to do this. The Lord is commanding me to do this. At
last all her clothes are folded. I leave mine for later. I turn my back on
Minsky. I rush back to the computer. An hour later I go back to the folded
clothes. I discover I had forgotten to fold two of her shirts. Now they looked
full of creases. It’s really true what she says that they get creased if you
don’t fold them while still warm. Now it takes me much longer trying to get the
creases out. In the meantime Keo, our other cat, sat on the clothes I had
folded. Now I had to redo some of the folding.
I finish my
task and reflect upon it. These rebellious feelings and thoughts, what are
they? They are the thoughts I have that correspond to the affections beaming
into my will from the spirits. Good spirits or evil? That’s always the first
thing that must be settled. Obviously evil in this case because these
affections are struggling against the conjugial which evil spirits hate more
than anything else. I am the one who insists on maintaining connection with
these spirits because of my delight in their affections. What is my
delight? No doubt it is the delight of dominion, of ruling over my wife. It is
as delight that is inherited by men and reinforced by culture. Now I’m holding
on to this delight, enjoying myself in myself, narcissistically. Ruling over a woman. Ruling over my wife.
Even as I submit voluntarily to her request, I rebel inwardly against it. I
won’t do it the way you like it done. You can do it yourself if that’s what you
want. I’ll do it my way, and that’s enough. Etc. This is from dominion from the
love of self. The affections of the evil spirits that I delight in cause
corresponding thoughts in my understanding—and these are the things I perceive
and am aware of.
These
attachments I have to delights brought on by the influx of evil affections must
be detached from my personality. This process of extirpation is done by the
Lord by means of the temptations created by our attachments to delights from
evil affections. The temptations are created by the Doctrine in our understanding,
or the conscience. A temptation involves facing two things simultaneously:
the delight of evil and the truth in our Doctrine. The Doctrine of the
Wife, which I acknowledge (see Chapter xx, Sections xx and xx), requires that I
strive to act from my wife, not from my love of dominion. Now I’m creating a
false scorpion of nonduality in my mind by acting like we’re both natural minds
and only my external conduct is to count. But the Doctrine says that the
conjugial is interior, which means not my external conduct alone but what are
my feelings, loyalties, and thoughts—are these internal things what she would
want them to b? Is this not what will create our union in heaven? Can I
maintain these rebellious thoughts and feelings even as I claim to her my inmost
friendship and love? Is love not the desire to make her happy from myself, and
is not myself what I think and feel? Etc.
I feel
satisfied. I thank the Lord for giving me insight and victory. I rededicate
myself to my highest ideals—that they are possible and practical:
The reason why
the Lord spoke of His conjunction with men as of His conjunction with the
Father, that is, of His Human with the Divine which was in Himself, is that the
Lord is not conjoined with man's proprium, but with what is His own. The Lord
removes man's proprium, and gives from His own, and in that He dwells.
(…)
Because the
Divine of the Lord received by angels and men constitutes heaven and the church
in them, they are one with the Lord, as He and the Father are one.
"Be ye perfect,
as your Father in the heavens is perfect" ([Matthew 5] verse 48).
(AE 254)
Chapter 2, Section 13
13. The Regeneration Discipline Of Conjugial Massage
Conjugial
disciplines are joint projects couples undertake to cooperate with the Lord in
being prepared for conjugial love in heaven. By way of illustration I can make
a few observations about my involvement in a conjugial massage discipline. This
was in response to pain management efforts involving the usual areas—hip, small
of back, knee, foot, shoulder blades, neck, scalp, fingers. Millions of people
in our generation take a variety of popular over the counter drugs to manage
these pains. Being somewhat rational about it, we decided it’s better to use
non-drug approaches to pain management in our life. We learned about Bonnie
Pruden’s Trigger Point Therapy from her popular book some decades ago. We also
learned to practice Yoga, to avoid bad positions, to walk straight. Still, this
would not be enough, and we tried acupuncture, which helped my knee problem,
from a judo practice injury I sustained in my 20s. and
never relinquished until the acupuncture. But it issues remained with neck,
shoulder, thighs, hips, as a result of which we learned about “deep tissue” body
work massage. A combination of these things more or less keeps us in a
functional state physically, allowing us to enjoy and appreciate the Lord’s
abundant gifts.
People
sustain pain areas, marking the event with a permanent muscle tightening. I
think of it as ”sensorimotor memory.” I assume that it
is within the corporeal mind, thus the lowest region of the natural mind. This
region is turned outward towards the physical world which it apprehends and
reacts to through the body’s sensory organs racing to the brain where they are
organized into information chunks that the corporeal mind can actually sensate
to. This synchronous reactivity with the physical world gives our mind the
ability to have sensations and perceptions of the world and ourselves in it.
Sensorimotor memory is an accurate recording of this interaction process
between the body in the physical world and the mind in the spiritual world.
Sensorimotor
memory keeps track of this flow of information between the natural world and
the spiritual world. The sensorimotor memory is situated at the precise
interface between the spiritual world and the natural world. The interface between the spiritual and natural
worlds takes place in no other place than the human mind.
For "the face" signifies the affections (n. 4796,
4797, 4799, 5102, 5695, 6604), consequently those things which belong to the
face signify such things as belong to the affections, and correspond to their
functions and uses; as the "eye" signifies the understanding of
truth, the "nostrils" the perception of truth, those things which
belong to the mouth, as the "jaws," the "lips," the
"tongue," signify such thing as relate to the utterance of truth (n.
4796-4805).(AC 9049)
Sensorimotor
memory is etched in frozen lines on the face and hands of an individual. An
individual’s eyes reveal interior affections because affections lead to
sensorimotor acts when not prevented (xx). These sensorimotor acts are etched
in the sensorimotor memory. Similarly, the many falls we tale as children, and those as adults when we sustain an injury.
Each and every one of these pain moments are recorded in sensorimotor memory.
Whatever lives in the mind strives to live in the body. Sensorimotor memory lives
in the muscle-bone-cartilage system of the body (xx). The wrinkles on the face
are accumulations of items of sensorimotor memory recorded from the face’s
expressions, or acting out, of our daily willing and thinking. Despite the
impressive amount of information in sensorimotor memory, spirits and angels are
able to “go through” its content very rapidly as they meet each other in the
world of spirits (xx). And angels are able to go through the deeper layers of
the mind of spirits, seeing there a record of their willing in daily life,
whether each item is infernal or heavenly (xx).
The excellence
of our sensorimotor memory is of tremendous use to the physical body for it is
what controls the body in physical training. We learn to talk, walk, write,
run, dance, type, play musical instruments. We learn how to drive a car and replace
a tire, how to navigate inside the house and on the streets. Our eyes know
where to look when, to obtain the information we want at any point. We do many
muscular movements spontaneously and in reaction. This entire world of the
corpus is kept in order and in going condition by the sensorimotor mind. This
mind is turned outward towards the world and identifies with the world. Thus,
it is turned away from the spiritual world and heaven, and is in opposition to
it since the Fall of the human race on this earth.
To be in
opposition to heaven means that the sensorimotor memory is unwilling to be
rearranged into a different order than it is born into since the Fall. The only force that will
compel it to accept rearrangement is the power of the Word which we take up
into the mind and used it to effect the rearrangement. As we do this, to that
extent the Lord then turns the sensorimotor mind around, so that now it is
facing upward to heaven. This means that we are committed to reformation by
means of the power of the Letter of the Writing sin our mind.
2. The
Sensuous Mind Turns Itself Away From The Rational
After
reformation, the sensuous mind is rearranged according to the dualities of the
Writings, and this compels the corporeal mind to realign itself with the
sensuous mind. This realignment is effected by correspondences. The sensuous
mind takes up sensuous correspondences from the Word and instruction. For
example, it is universally taught that the mind is corrupted by immoral
behavior. In other words, a corporeal concept “corrupted” is applied to a sensuous
concept “immoral behavior.” The corporeal concept is not the same as the
sensuous concept, but they are related to each other by correspondence. The
idea of “immoral” is a discrete degree higher than the idea of “corrupt.” In
this way, the two lower levels of our natural mind are tied to each other by
means of correspondences.
In the
Writings it is revealed that the sensuous correspondences are within the
corporeal meanings, and that the corporeal is the effect while the sensuous is
its instrumental cause (xx). Thus, “corrupted” applies to the body and physical
things, but its origin is the sensuous correspondence of “immoral.” We also
have the historically known expression of “healthy mind within a healthy body”
and sometimes “spirit” appears instead of mind, the two being the same. The
word “healthy” has an external literal meaning, which applies to natural things
like the body; and it has an internal meaning which applies to spiritual things
like the mind or spirit. A healthy body is a correspondence from a healthy
mind. The latter precedes the former since all spiritual things precede natural
things as cause precedes effect (xx).
One of the
great scientific revelations in the Writings is the information that successive
degrees from firsts to lasts, are present in
simultaneous degrees from inmost to outmost (xx). For instance, the effect
cannot exist without the cause being in it (xx). As long as the effect is
observable, its cause lies within it in simultaneous order. When we look at the
sock we put on, we are making use of an object that is called the natural
effect or, ultimate lasts. The sock on my foot could not exist without the
motive to produce socks for retail merchandising, coupled with other motives in
a sequence, such as my motive to go to the store for buying the sock, and my
motive for keeping it handy and clean so I can put it on today. Each of these
motives acted together in a coherent whole in order to get this sock on my
foot. None of these motives can be removed without making the sock vanish from
my foot—is this not so? It’s a rational necessity.
Hence it is
that angels and spirits can go through each other’s memories and affectional
biographies—the past is always within the present as cause is always within the
effect. Also, no one goes to hell for past sins and evil deeds. People go to
hell for the past that is with them in the present.
Such as the past is, such is the
present, consequently such is the future!
The
In the
Angels
enjoy food delicacies that appear on their tables while sitting down for meals
and celebrations (xx). Celestial gardens have fruit trees of magnificent
appearance and taste (xx). Angels enjoy the aesthetic beauty of the art and architecture
designed and instantiated for them by the Lord (xx). The homes of angels are palaces
of art, beauty, and functionality (xx). Precious stones and jewels are
everywhere (xx). Fabulously elegant and royal clothes appear in their closets
from the Lord on many occasions (xx). And best of all, angels enjoy conjugial
love, sleeping in its embrace every night (xx).
The
In popular psychology
today, Jung’s nonduality continues to be a very strong influence. Our culture
is immersed in the idea that the sensuous self deserves a separate life from
the rational self. Therapists encourage people to dissociate the hold that conscience
has on the sensuous. Conscience is the rational and moral dictating to the
sensuous, and the rebellion of the sensuous leads to immoral behavior,
materialistic science, and self-serving justifications for maintaining infernal
sensuous involvements or servitudes. But the truth has been revealed by the
Lord in the Writings. The sensuous is the very containant of the rational, and
one completes the other, and neither can live without the other (xx).
The
scientific reality is that every object or property is created into its own
order and hierarchy, from the spiritual Sun to the last ultimate on the earth,
and the entire chain of existence is maintained from Firsts to lasts, through
intermediaries at discrete levels connected by correspondences. Hence it is not
possible for the sensuous to exist and function without the rational within it,
animating it by correspondences form above. For the rational level of the
natural mind is a discrete degree above the sensuous, and looks down on it, and
sees it, thus controls it.
This is how
it was with the celestial races on earth called the
One
consequence of the loss of the rational was this thinning out of existence in
heaven instead of a fuller life than on earth. Another consequence was the
notion that becoming rational meant that we must lose the sensuous. Popular
psychology and literature fostered this idea by creating personality tests that
were interpreted as identifying and individual’s type, whether sensuous or
rational, or a balance between the two, or a dominance of one over the other. This
fallacious model ignored the truth which was that the rational is within the
sensuous or else the sensuous could not operate and function.
What
happens then when the sensuous is closed off to the rational? How can it then continue
to function?
3. Creation Of The Natural-Rational
Mind
After the Fall, the new spiritual race had a split mind. The will and
the understanding were no longer locked together by correspondence. People now
inherited evil affections, that is, they were born with shackles to the hells.
They had to regenerate before passing on, in order to have a mind that can live
in heaven. Regeneration involved (1) elevating the understanding through truths
from Written Revelation and (2) using this higher rational perspective to
purify the will from its infernal affections. Note therefore that the
understanding had to gain independent existence from the will.
But this is
only a general description, and is an appearance of the sensuous mind. To the rational
mind, there can never be an actual independence of the understanding from the
will because it understands that the understanding is of truth and the will is
of love, and truth is nothing but the outward form of love (xx). From this the
rational mind can see that when the understanding is elevated by means of
truths from the Word, this elevation process cannot take place without a
motivation in the will. In order for us to do any thinking we must first do the
willing. We must will our thoughts! Willing creates thinking, and no thinking
can come into existence without willing. Remove the willing, and there is no
thinking. You can see this in your voluntary acts. Remove the motive to move
your hand, and it stops moving. Lose the motive to eat, and you starve
yourself. Action without willing is not possible.
Similarly,
action without thinking is not possible (xx), though the appearance to the
sensuous mind is that sometimes we act by impulse, without thinking. But this
is a fallacy of the senses. Similarly with sensation.
It appears to the sensuous mind that first we sense some smell in the air, and
then we think about what it indicates. Or, it seems as if we first see a friend
on the street and then we start thinking about him.
But the
scientific truth, revealed in the Writings, is that sensation itself is an act
of thinking. It is not the sensory organs that sensate but the understanding.
The understanding senses, or sensates, the pattern of information chunks coming
from sensory organs into the brain. The sensorimotor portion of the mind then
sensates in correspondence with the physical patterns induced in the brain from
the organs. The activity of sensating is an activity of the mind that involves
(a) the readiness or motive to sensate, and (b) the organization and content of
sensuous correspondences in the understanding. Thus both the affective and the
cognitive mind are involved in the process of experiencing a sensation.
It is not
necessary that we be aware of these organic operations in order for them to go
on according to the Lord’s created order. Hence the sensuous mind can turn
itself away from the internal operations of the will and understanding, and it
can continue to operate, seemingly by itself. But this is an appearance which
gives a fallacious description of reality when confirmed and built up into a
doctrine, philosophy, or scientific theory. The rational continues to mediate
between the spiritual and the natural worlds, but unconsciously. The unconscious
operation of the rational mind is called “influx” in the Writings.
Influx is
from the Lord. It refers to the mechanism or intermediaries the Lord uses to
maintain the operation of the sensuous mind and the corporeal below it. Despite
the Fall, society and culture have continued to
develop into more and more advanced forms of human civilization and ideas.
Although the rational was cut off form the sensuous, the interconnection was
duplicated by unconscious spiritual influx, which kept things going
progressively in society and the human mind.
But in
order to be regenerated and be capable of living in heaven, the individual had
to regain conscious rational control over the sensuous. This was possible by
the opening of the conscious rational mind in two organic phases, one external,
the other interior. The external portion of the new rational
mind is called the natural-rational; the interior portion of it is called the
interior-natural. Prior to beginning regeneration, we must undergo reformation.
This involves the opening of the natural-rational mind by means of the
understanding of the Letter of the Writings. Then, the
opening of the interior-natural mind within that, to the extent that we apply
the understanding of the Letter to our daily willing and thinking.
With the rational
mind now open at both the external and interior sides, regeneration can begin
and proceed until the end. The sensuous mind is reformed, and along with it the
corporeal. Now we enter into combats with the hells as they fight to retain our
shackles to them. We struggle and suffer through many ups and downs and
reversals, but make steady progress because it is the Lord who fights for us,
if only we are willing.
The regeneration
of the sensuous and corporeal mind requires systematic involvement that the
Lord calls “cooperation,” warning us that without it we cannot be regenerated
(xx). Systematic cooperation in fighting against our infernal affections and
delights requires the use of spiritual disciplines. Conjugial disciplines
involving the physical body and health are also necessary.
Sensorimotor
memory can be altered by physical reconditioning of the muscles, ligaments, and
bone alignment. We do this normally, almost without thinking, when we pull or
tear a muscle or joint. We spontaneously decrease its use while it’s repairing
itself, after which we start using it gradually, and finally back to the way we
used it before the injury. Pain is a common sensation for injured muscles or
joints. Millions of people every day take pain medication in the form of over
the counter drugs. Pain is the conscious sensation of the sensorimotor mind.
The mind has three portions: affective (will), cognitive (understanding), and
sensorimotor (sensations). Pain is the cognitive activity that accompanies
sensation.
One
significant source of daily pain is chronic contraction of muscle fibers. These
contracted states are set off by bumps, falls, and minor injuries that every
individual accumulates over the years and decades of life. Body work massage
involves locating the contracted and congealed muscles and pressing on them
forcefully in order to encourage them to release somewhat. By pressing
forcefully or smashing the area for periods of 6 to 12 seconds, there results a
loosening or breaking up of the congealed and cramped muscles and sub-cutaneous
materials. The pressure is applied differently depending on the sensitivity of
the area. For example, the hips and shoulders can take a lot of pressure from
the tip of the elbow. Using oil allows the elbow to run smoothly over the long
line on both sides of the spine, depressing the tight musculature and causing
it to relax its grip of tightness. One can use the side of the elbow for the
back of the thighs, and the knuckles and fingers for everything else, including
the scalp, the facial musculature, the hands, and the feet.
This
process when done regularly greatly reduces the kind of body pains that cause
millions of Americans to spend billions of dollars annually trying to relieve
it with chemical drugs, whose side effects, when taken excessively, can be
serious for many people.
This kind
of “deep tissue” body work is very painful at the beginning. One might even use
the word excruciating. But because it is fully controllable, it is something we
can learn to endure for the sake of the release and benefits. It is fully
controllable because the pressure is applied gradually, increasing steadily
over the seconds until it reaches the maximum to be applied to that area. You hold
it there for a few seconds, then you gradually release. So it’s about a
six-second build up, a six-second hold, and a six-second release. If I’m being
worked on I indicate the strength of the pain vocally. As the pain builds up,
my moan gets louder, and if my moan dramatically increases, it’s a sign for the
other person to stop increasing the pressure. This kind of verbal or non-verbal
signals can be worked out to achieve maximum control over how much pain you
want to stand for on that session in that area. It varies. On some days I can
stand for a lot of pain using slow breathing and relaxation, or at times,
panting breathing. It’s common to want to tighten muscles when feeling pain,
but one can learn gradually to inhibit that habit response to pain. Tightening muscles when sensing pain adds to the chronic tightening
and cramping of muscles.
The pain
that is applied in the deep tissue body work immediately subsides when the
pressure is released and unlike injuries or workouts, the treatment does not
cause pain afterwards. Instead, there is a release of pain and a feeling of
well being and thankfulness. My wife and I decided to turn this into a joint
marital discipline for the sake of our conjugial development. And this is when
the merely health activity (natural) was turned into a health activity within
which there was something spiritual for one’s regeneration.
Specifically
what turned it into a spiritual discipline is the motivation which activated
us, which was not merely a health involvement, but a health involvement that we
can do jointly as a couple for spiritual purposes. Further, it was more
intimate and personal than other types of joint involvement like cooking or
doing the household budget together. The medical reason was there, but this
could have been taken care of by a health professional (as it had been before).
We had an independent reason that was religious, namely, our desire to
cooperate with the Lord in helping us grow together as a conjugial couple. This
religious motive always looks around the couple’s life to locate secular
activities that can be turned into religious ones. This is the life of
religious discipline, in my view. And so we pegged “deep
tissue body work” as another convenient “method” for forming our conjoint
conjugial self.
Since I was
practicing the discipline of self-witnessing (mentioned above; see also Note 20
at end). I was able to monitor my thoughts and feelings before, during, and
after each of our sessions. In this way I became conscious of all sorts of
temptations that I had to overcome by imploring the Lord to give me the
victory. This is the core of spiritual discipline in the
By the
Lord’s mercy I was allowed to overcome these temptations and move to a second
phase of the discipline. Now that I was able to “make myself” participate at
our weekly appointed time, I underwent doubts as to my ability to do a good job
at it. The routine we decided on involved that I should lie on the massage
table first and my wife would work on my body. Then (after about one hour) we
switched places. When my wife was doing the work I could see how well she did
it by how she manipulated the muscles. There are all sorts of details to learn.
There is an optimum amount of pressure to apply; if it is too little, there is
less medical benefit; if it is too much the treatment turns into screaming
torture. Also one needs to learn what “instrument” to use on the area: elbow,
knuckles, fingers, arm, knee. One needs to learn the
rate of pressing in, the length of holding it, and the rate of releasing. When
it was my turn to work on my wife’s body I did it all wrong. She was
long-suffering and patient with my ineptitudes—and very didactic.
All sorts
of temptations assailed me like the
Now I’m
experiencing temptations in terms of “little things” which to me indicates
celestial rather than spiritual temptations. Some of them relate to performance
anxiety by which I perceive my lack of skill in some areas due to lowered
motivation, commitment, or love and the desire to be of use to the neighbor.
Selfishness and arrogance become impediments that I must overcome by turning
again and again to the Lord for help. I must not let my mind wander from
commitment to better and better performances, and thus services. I must not
short change my service and hurry over some areas and thus neglect them out of
laziness. I must not chit chat and disturb her quietude. I must pay attention
to extra things like the music I put on—it should be to her pleasing and
relaxation. I must not use more oil than is necessary because she doesn’t like
it as it closes up her pores. I should be able to anticipate her wants—whether
she is cold and needs an extra covering, or whether she is too hot. I must not
end the session with painful things but with pleasant and light. Etc.
Deep tissue
work relieves pain and improves functioning but there are also less severe
forms of massage that can be physically enjoyable and offer similar
opportunities for practicing conjugial discipline. I continue to marvel how few
couples we’ve ever met give each other massage treatments on a regular basis.
One lovely use of it is for a husband to help his wife relax deeply before
falling asleep. Care must be taken not to use it for pressuring the wife to
have sex, either by direct suggestions or implied ones. This use is different
and the two must not be mixed up or else it loses its first use relating to
helping the wife to fall asleep.
The fact
that married couples avoid regular massage with each other may be due more to
husbands than wives. For falling asleep men prefer sex, when it’s not lengthy.
To distinguish between sex and massage a man must elevate his consciousness
above the corporeal and sensuous, thus to the rational where the spiritual
lurks close by. If a man is reluctant to do that, he will oppose the idea of
giving his wife a massage to prepare her for sleep. This is my tentative
hypothesis why so many couples do not use massage. The conjugial husband is
able to overcome this problem because his mind is in the rational when he
thinks about his marriage.
The form or
type of massage can be adjusted to each purpose or conjugial use. Besides deep
tissue work there is also massage for relaxation, for preparation for sex, and
massage for putting to sleep. I especially recommend the latter for husbands to
take on as a regeneration discipline. Think of how much more heavenly peace can
enter your wife’s life by your discipline. Women are more assaulted by this
earthly world than men, especially the added stress they experience from a
masculinized culture and society, as all countries on this planet appear to be
since historical beginnings. It was otherwise in the earliest civilizations on
this earth known as the
5. The Masculine And Feminine Mind
Since
everyone has a will and an understanding, it is clear that men and women are
constructed out of both masculine and feminine organs. A man’s understanding is
masculine and primary in his life, while the love that is within the
understanding becomes secondary in his vision and priority. Therefore a man is
internal love in the will that is covered over with external truth. Before a
man’s eyes, there stands truth, and love is behind it. Before a woman’s eyes
there stands loves, and truth is behind it. A woman’s understanding is her
masculine part since truth is masculine and she takes truth into her
understanding just as she takes the male semen into her womb. A woman is
described as truth covered over with love, while a man is described as love
covered over with truth. Love is received in the organ of the will while truth
is received in the organ of the understanding. The marriage of good and truth
is the basis of the universe and its creation and maintenance by the Lord (xx).
Therefrom it is that marriages are holy when a man representing truth unites
with a woman representing love so that the one can have form the other what it doesn’t
by itself.
Women have
truths just as much as men. Let there be no mistake about that.
What’s
being said here is different. It’s important for
understanding how a man and a woman form an angelic unity from within, a unity
which is eternal, unbreakable, and forever growing daily.
The wife
takes the husband’s semen into her womb, nurtures it, until a child is born.
This is the result of their love or union. This is the highest use in the
universe, for which all creation was made is being maintained by the Lord. This
use is the building up of the heavens in the Grand Human with more and more
people form all the planets. The more populous a society of heaven is, the greater is its joy and creativity. This is because
everyone’s good and truth, which is unique from the Lord, adds itself to the
society so that each shares and becomes aware of the good and truth of everyone
else. This is true within a society and reverberates to other societies in a
chain of sequence by which the societies are aligned in the Grand Human. You
can see from this that babies being born on the numerous earths is the highest
use for that earth since every baby is born for heaven to be an angel. Since
the Fall, every baby is born for heaven, but can only
get there by regeneration of the adult. Children who
die before growing up, do so in heaven and have a special innocence not shared
by those who arrive as regenerated adults.
Because of
this supreme spiritual use, a wife represents the highest possible wisdom and
love for a human being. Divine Wisdom or Divine Truth is represented in the
Word by the feminine: women, wives, girls, virgins, daughters, mothers, grand
mothers, aunts, sisters (Faith 59, xx). The Church is called a mother and a
bride. A woman giving birth represents the Lord bringing Divine Doctrine or
Truth to the Church in the minds of men. Thus all truth has the feminine as its
mother, since love is the origin and life of all truth. The surrendered husband
is the regenerated husband who is elevated to a celestial mind, called an
angel-husband (xx). Divine Love in the Word is represented by the masculine:
husband, priest, father (xx).
Everything that pertains to the will, in the
Word is represented as love or good. Everything that pertains to the
understanding, in the Word is represented as truth or wisdom. In the celestial
mind, love is primary, which is why Father and Husband represent love. But in
the spiritual mind, father and husband do not represent love, but truth
instead. The spiritual state is a lower state than the celestial. A man then
becomes elevated when he represents love, which is done when he acts from his
wife’s will. Then his mind becomes a celestial mind, otherwise it remains
spiritual, and this mind cannot regenerate (xx). The regeneration of those who
are spiritual angels in the Second Heaven is also achieved by love, but to a
lesser extent because they value love of truth higher than love of good (xx).
The celestial angels of the Third heaven value love of good more than love of
truth. And good is in the will, hence feminine. The celestial angels put love
of good (celestial mind) ahead of love of truth (spiritual mind).
From all
this you can see that the “feminization” of man and society is nothing else
than the elevated man. The elevated man is feminized because celestial is above
spiritual. Man is born spiritual and in order to regenerate,
must become celestial. This is an elevation. Regeneration elevates from
spiritual to celestial. To give truth priority over love is spiritual, but to
give love priority over truth, is celestial. To become
a celestial mind, or elevated husband, the man must turn himself inside out, as
it were. Much of our disagreements with our wife, by which our regeneration is arrested,
revolves around this dilemma for a man:
(a) putting truth considerations
above love considerations
vs.
(b) putting love considerations
above truth considerations
Alternative (a) is masculine and
inborn, leading to damnation. Alternative (b) is the method of regeneration,
leading to salvation.
For a
husband who is forming the
The fact is
that when truth is made primary and love secondary, it is not truth but appears
to be. This is obvious when you consider that truth and love cannot exist
separately (xx). Therefore all truth that is genuine and real,
is nothing but the external activity or appearance of love. Love is always
within genuine truth, and what is within, is a discrete degree above or
superior in excellence of creation (xx). When a man adopts Rule 1, or the
Doctrine of the Wife as his regeneration discipline, he does nothing else than
turn everything inside out of himself. His inmost portion is love, so this must
come out and be first. His outer portion is truth, so this must align itself
with love and be married to it as a one, so that the husband’s truth is nothing
else than the wife’s externalized love. In this way he can have what is hers
from the Lord, and she can have what is his from the Lord. This union is
created when the husband thinks from the wife’s will (Rule 1).
The use of
massaging one’s wife to sleep every night is a supreme use by which the husband
wills and thinks from her feminized love, her good, and her needs. To adopt it
as a regeneration discipline means to acknowledge that
it is a Divine commandment. Every truth we understand from the Writings is a
commandment for our life. Massage is mentioned once in the Writings, when
discussing the
Chapter 2, Section 14
14. The
Regeneration Discipline of Heaven On Wheels
Recognition of sin
and a person's self-examination are the beginnings of repentance (TCR 525)
It is easy
for the
Prior to my
reformation I drove in a style one can call being a rushing maniac. It was a
morally bankrupt way of driving in which the usual claims to being a civilized
and reasonable person, fell off my personality prior to entering the car and
settling myself behind the wheel, ready to be this other person. He was crude,
gross, aggressive, hostile, arrogant, lawless, foolish, unfair, risky, lacking
compassion and respect for other human road users. As usual in all matters of my regeneration, my wife played a courageous
and definitive role in making me look at my driving personality from the
perspective of the Writings.
I went
through a three-step process that later in our book, I defined as the AWM
approach to driver self-improvement:
(A)
Acknowledging that my aggressive driving is a sin
(W)
Witnessing myself in the act of committing the sin
(M) Modifying
my act
The
acknowledgement step is the most difficult. We run off automatic denial
routines to prevent us from making this acknowledgement. First, we deny that
our driving is aggressive. Assertive, maybe; impatient maybe;
but not aggressive. Second, we deny that driving styles are sins. For
instance, only ten percent of my students, when taking the aggressive driving
course, at first are willing to define tailgating as a moral issue. By the end
of the semester, that percentage rises to fifty percent. Despite my efforts,
half of them still reject my idea that aggressive driving is immoral, and from
hell. They are unwilling to admit that other road users have human rights that
must not be violated. They mostly define driving as competition, and therefore
the rules of competition allow you to fight for your place, for your comfort,
and the freedom of individual style.
The
morality that characterizes the thinking level of driving is at a corporeal
level suitable for the Letter of the Old Testament. The law of talon is the
operating procedure. Drivers who operate in a stupid manner are offensive, need
to be punished, and no longer deserve respect or dignity. We give ourselves
permission to compel another driver to go faster than they want to by
tailgating them, especially when they block our way and refuse to switch lanes.
We give ourselves permission to think offensive and denigrating things about
another driver. We give ourselves permission to feel rage and hatred towards
other drivers who show their inconsiderateness and put us in danger or prevent
us from doing what we want. We find a way of justifying ourselves in these
hostile feelings, thoughts, and actions on a daily basis while we are in
traffic with others.
The first
step of Acknowledging is therefore the hardest to make. This step is equivalent
to the reformation of the
1. Becoming A Reformed Driver
Time had
come for me to meet my higher destiny. At age 42 I was at the height of my
external career, which is that of a tenured full professor at a university with
a respectable reputation in my field of psychology. I was also at the height of
my internal career, which was to become an avatar—the self-sufficient
accomplished man who has risen to the top of the intelligence scale of his
race, needing no God or superstition, himself as the sole arbiter of what’s
right, true, and good, possessing full self-control over his weaknesses,
unstoppable and limitless in his potential extensions.
That’s how
foolish and blind I was when I had reached the top of the ladder I was climbing
on since adolescence when I first started formulating the idea of my
superiority to everyone else, needing no God, being above morality, above
religion, above culture, art, and aesthetics, above the human race.
How
amazingly insane! And yet I was fully convinced with total certainty that I was
this avatar.
Then, for
no reason I could see, all of a sudden, there was a slow but steady and building
feeling of anxiety rising from inside to my awareness. What’s this! I was
immediately alarmed and shaken. I thought I had put all these weaknesses of
human emotions to the side, leaving me in a solid steady state of smooth
sailing on the river of life conquered. This anxiety, what was it, what did it
have to do with, who was it? My legs led me to the bookshelf in our living
room. My hands removed the Jewish Prayer Book that I had kept as a childhood
memento, with my parents’ handwritten inscription on it. As an avatar, I
thought it would be chicken for me to try to hide my religious background. It
turns out there was a purpose for it that I had not anticipated. I opened it
and began to read the Hebrew sentences I could not fully understand. I could
read everything phonetically. I could read the same verses in the old European Orthodox
accent and characteristic sing song intonation, or I could read it in modern Hebrew with an Israeli accent and sentence pattern
intonation. But I could not have translated more than 10 percent of the
sentences! The rest was totally meaningless!
After a few
days of this, I got tired of it. I was unmoved. Then the next time my hand
reached towards the bookshelf it got hold of the American edition of the Jewish
Prayer book, that had been a gift from a friend of the family, but which I had
never actually read or used. But now I noticed with delight that the right hand
side was in English and was a translation of the Hebrew on the left hand side.
How amazed I was to be able to read those familiar prayers with 100 percent
meaning rather than 10 percent. It was like a dark sooty wall that had just
been professionally cleaned up, turning out to be a large clear window pane
giving access to the landscapes in the
Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who
sanctifies us with his commandments, and commands us to light the candles of
Shabbat
Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe who
sanctifies us with his commandments, and commands us concerning washing of hands
Blessed are you, Lord, our God, king of the universe who has
chosen us from among all people, and exalted us above every tongue and sanctified
us with His commandments
I am the Lord, your God, who lead
you from the
May His great Name grow exalted and sanctified in the world
that He created as He willed.
May His great Name be blessed forever and ever.
Blessed, praised, glorified, exalted, extolled mighty, upraised, and lauded be
the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is He beyond any blessing and song praise and
consolation that are uttered in the world.
May my mouth declare the praise of God and may all flesh
bless His holy name forever. We will bless God from this time, forever, halleluiah.
Give thanks to God for He is good, for his kindness endures forever. Who can
express the might of God? Who can make heard all of His praise?
Beware, lest your heart be deceived, and you turn and serve
other gods, and worship them Speak to the children of Israel and say to them, they
should make themselves tzitzit (fringes) on the corners of their clothing
throughout their generations, and give the tzitzit of each corner a thread of
blue.
How amazing
that I should have recited these words in Hebrew as a young child, not knowing
their meaning, and how amazing that as an adult I never was exposed to their
meaning, or perhaps, I kept myself from being exposed. I found in these words a
new relationship from within, a new comfort that took care of the angst that
had bothered and threatened me. I was not alone, like Atlas. I was just a
created human being, a mortal, an individual with limited vision and power
within limited spheres of action and decision. How relieved I was I no longer
had to be an avatar and a god.
I had never
taken time out to get to know this old God of my childhood. But now, there He
was, and there was I, now an adult. So now it was God and me, tete a tete, as
it were, person to person, like Rabbi Baal Shem Tov whose legendary magical feats
and stories enlightened my childhood years with the exciting youthful visions
of adventure and mystery. Along with “der leimene golem”—the Jewish version of
a Hollywood Frankenstein set in
The words
in English reverberated in my mind, over and over: “Blessed art Thou Lord our
God King of the universe.” I recited the familiar Hebrew incantation, bored
into me by childhood indoctrination: Baruch Atah Adonai Elohenu Melech Haolam.”
And I thought of the meaning in English: “Blessed art Thou Lord our God King of
the universe.” One so familiar and meaningless; the other so
new and alive with meaning. But now they have come together in my mind
and it was very exciting, because enlightening. I turned the concept around in
my mind: “King of the universe.” Why a king, I wondered. I suppose that’s how
they used to think in the olden days. God is a King. I thought of the word
“Lord”—Adonai. It means Master. God is King and Master. I did not yet know or
reflect on the truth that when Jews read Adonai the Old Testament Hebrew
actually spells out Jehovah.
During
these months of religious revival it never occurred to me that to meet God I
needed to reform my life. I continued to think like an avatar, but now, a
religious avatar. I became a pious man in the order of my own construction. I
thought of God as a loving super-natural intelligence who wants to interact
with individuals who are especially high in intelligence and are able to
apprehend Him and His Truth. My old search for truth continued as before, but
this time the truth was centered in God. I was interested in God because I was
interested in truth, and God was part of this truth. I was very far from the
idea that my intelligence is held together and operated by God from within, and
without that, I would fall into a thoughtless heap of protein cells and
whirling atoms vibrating off electrons and mesons. God and me
still hadn’t met one on one, face to face. God was not yet something real in my
mind.
After a few
weeks of this new enchantment with Jewish memories from my childhood, my hand one
day reached for the red covered edition of the Holy Bible on the shelf, next to
the other “religious” books I had kept. I turned the pages to the New
Testament. I was surprised at my boldness, feeling trepidation. What’s going to
happen to me? I had never done that. I swiped the Gideon Bible from a hotel
room years ago, for no reason I could think of except that I was a book
collector in those days and filled my library with books I might look at but
never really did. But that day I started reading the New Testament, something
forbidden to a Jewish boy—except perhaps as literature. But literature was not
my reason for reading it. It was just to see, out of personal curiosity, what
this forbidden thing was. I had broken
the barrier of being birthed in the Church, though I was an ignorant infant.
I read
through the Four Gospels and the Acts, and the Epistles, and the Book of
Revelations. What amazed me to no end was that the New Testament was a continuation
of the Old Testament. Isn’t astonishing that I didn’t know that? My brother who is almost 50 years old today, still doesn’t know
it. The fact is that if you hear something you’re disinclined to hear, you haven’t
heard it, and you don’t know it.
The rest are to him as shades, all as it were, rejected far
to the sides, so that he sees and hears, and does not see and does not hear (SE
2850)
As I read
through Matthew I did not come to any part that I could react to as foreign or
unacceptable to my Jewish training. Likewise with Mark.
And Luke and John. The same with the
rest. The Book of Revelation made no sense but it just sounded very
familiar and similar to Ezekiel, Isaiah, and some of the Psalms. I loved the
personality of the Lord and His disciples. Very Jewish, I thought. I approved
of Paul and his Jewish logic—much like the Talmud of the Rabbis. One thing put
me off: all the passages that talked negatively about the Jews. I felt it
should have said “the leaders of the Jews” or “the officials of the Church” but
not “the Jews.” I felt it cast the Jews in a bad image and maybe this was part
of the source for anti-Semitism—the Jesus Christ badmouthing His people. Still,
I continued to think that the Jews were superior because they are the “Chosen People
of God.” Reading the New Testament and seeing it as a mere continuation of
Judaism, I was willing to accept the Christian religion by subsuming it under
the Jewish religion.
I thought
of myself as a Christian Jew. Still a Jew, but a kind of a
Jew, namely a Christian Jew. I felt myself superior to Christians who
were after all of the Gentile stock, while I was of the Jewish stock,
descendent of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I was proud of my name “Jakobovits”
which was the name of my adoptive father. It means Son of Jacob. Later, after I
became a
Even then,
though I was baptized in the Episcopal Church, the idea of repentance remained
dead in my mind. When I read the word in the Bible, or heard it in a sermon, it
never applied to me. I had nothing to repent of since I was not a sinner. I
hardly ever lied, and then only if I had to get out of trouble. I did not steal
or murder or swear falsely in court. I did not commit adultery, and what was in
my private thoughts could not hurt anybody. I had compassion for people in
distress. I was supportive of societal institutions. I was impartial and fair,
except in a few instances here and there. So basically repentance is not
something that applied to me.
True repentance means
not only examining what one does in one's life, but also what one intends in
one's will to do. (TCR
532)
About two
years later, when I started reading the Writings, I discovered what repentance
is:
Recognition of sin and a person's self-examination are the
beginnings of repentance.
No one in the Christian world can fail to recognize sin. For everyone there from childhood is taught what is evil and from
boyhood what is sinful. All youths learn this from their parents and
schoolmasters, as well as from the Ten Commandments, the first text put into
the hands of everyone in Christian countries. As he grows up, he learns this
later on from sermons in church and instruction at home. It is fully taught by
the Word, and moreover by civil law and justice, which say the same as the Ten
Commandments, and other parts of the Word. Sinful evil is nothing else but evil
directed against the neighbour; and is also directed against God, and this is
sin.
But the recognition of sin is useless, unless a person
examines what he does in his life, and observes whether he did such a thing in
secret or openly. For up to this point all that is mere knowledge; and then the
arguments of the preacher are merely a noise in the left ear, which goes
through to the right ear and so out. Finally it becomes no more than a thought,
a piety on the part of the lungs, in many cases mere imagination and a chimera.
But it is quite the reverse, if a person, recognizing what is a sin, examines
himself, finds one in himself and says to himself, 'This evil is a sin,' and
fearing everlasting punishment abstains from it. Then for the first time the
preacher's teaching and oratory in church is taken in with both ears and
reaches the heart, so that he turns from being a pagan into a Christian. (TCR
525)
At this
point I had to take a look at my driving personality from the perspective of my
religion. All my life I operated on the assumption that I was my own boss, my
own ruler within. I decided what is right, true, or good. In hindsight I can
see that I was unable to distinguish between truth and
good, nor between right or wrong except in terms of my own judgment. There was
no higher authority in my mind. God and the Word was something I had to figure
out, decide on, and act—all from myself in accordance with my understanding.
My
reformation began when I tied the concept of sin to the concept of evil. Isn’t
astonishing that it took me till age 42 to figure that out? But then I was
shaken to the core of my being as the thought struck me: “if a person, recognizing
what is a sin, examines himself, finds one in himself and says to himself,
'This evil is a sin,' and fearing everlasting punishment abstains from it.” (TCR 525). I suddenly realized with consternation and fear
that I was a candidate for hell! Hell was not just for others, bad people. I
was those bad people as long as I had evils in me. Hell means evil; evil means
hell. If I have evils, I’m tied to hell, and headed that way unless I break the
shackle by getting rid of the evils.
4. Driving Like The Lord Is My Passenger
I began the
discipline of driving before the Lord. My car was to be a heaven on wheels in
traffic. My feelings for other drivers had to be charitable, consequently there
was to be no tolerance for hostile or denigrating ideas about the neighbor. To reform myself as a driver was the most
difficult project I had ever undertaken. I suspect it will be difficult for
many men who are struggling to regenerate. The key to my success was my
listening to my wife. The plain things that she could see and perceive about my
driving habits were hidden to my eyes, or perhaps I should own up to the fact
that I kept them hidden from my view—which is not hard to do. Men are experts
at it from longstanding practice as part of their cultural masculinity. Having
my wife as guiding light for my driving took about a dozen years of resistance
on my part. I made her suffer for all those years when I drove like I wanted
to, even though she was my passenger. I would not modify my driving
q
to please her
q
to make her happy
q
to reassure her
q
to make her feel secure and safe
q
to make her feel that she has some
control over the driving situation
q
to feel compassionate for her stress
and fear as a vulnerable passenger
q
to honor her dignity as a human
being who has inalienable human rights
q
that should not be violated by her
husband who claimed to be her friend.
None of
these reasons had any power over that man that I was then, mean, selfish, and
foolish. And it’s amazing that I was then at the height of my professional and
scientific career. And my search for truth for I thought of myself as a good
man regardless of my driving emotions, driving thoughts, and driving acts. My
state of foolishness, or spiritual insanity, was so deep that I operated under
the principle that my feelings and thoughts behind the wheel were not relevant
to my salvation, to the question of whether I am a good person or evil. To my
mind evil had to do with the other person, not me. I was not evil,
therefore my feelings and thoughts could not be evil.
But
eventually I was willing to see myself from my wife’s perspective. This is what
saved me.
The first
step therefore was this acknowledgment. It is the acknowledgement that I am
such as she sees me, consequently such as she tells me. This put the burden on
my accepting, or trusting, what she tells me about me as a driver, DESPITE MY
THINKING THAT THE OPPOSITE IS THE CASE. This is the most difficult step in the
entire driver reformation process. For years I would merely deny what she says,
or else, ignore, and attribute it little credence. It was her fears speaking.
It was her unreasonable demands speaking. It was her weaknesses speaking. It
was her exaggerations speaking. It was her unwillingness to adapt speaking.
Through this mental discounting activity I set her opinion aside, along with
any responsibility I had to her as a husband who claimed to be a friend and a
decent man. This demonstrates the depth of the foolishness any of us can wallow
and remain, were it not our fear of hell and our desire to enter the conjugial
bliss of heaven.
After I acknowledged
that I was a selfish, immoral, illegal and dangerous driver, I began monitoring
my willing and thinking on each trip. I drove alone daily and I carried a tape
recorder for several years, speaking my thoughts out loud, later listening to
the tape. I then began to see myself more objectively. Everything on the tape
seemed familiar, recognizing myself; but the cumulative effect of listening to
half an hour of it, was illuminating. I saw the depth of my depravity as a
human being. I could no longer pretend like before that I was a decent and good
man. I was not better than my relatives! This is what struck me deeply. I
operated by higher standards of morality and thinking than my relatives, and
yet I was degenerating to their level of savagery and grossness from which I
thought I had freed myself.
Of course
this was a personal reaction. It wasn’t just like my relatives, but like the
entire culture and society. If you consider driving scenes depicted in cartoons
and movies you will immediately see that what they portray is evil, that is,
they portray doing evil to the neighbor while driving a car. Mostly they get
away with it. These scenes train the sensorimotor memory, engraving it with
that style of evil driving. This is then reinforced for several years by the
adults that drive us, who are verbally abusive and spew out a hostile
philosophy of other drivers. Children imbibe this subconsciously, along with
the style of driving the car, its start and stop motions, its acceleration,
changing lanes, going over the speed limit, competing, acting like a bad loser,
and many such things that we imbibe and acquire and make it part of ourselves
as drivers, ready to serve us when we get our driver’s license.
There are
good drivers out there among the 125 million on the road every day in the
I had to
start thinking about my driving according to my doctrine of fairness and
morality. I wanted to be a gentle driver more than an efficient one. This is
what allowed me to listen to my wife. As an efficient driver I had a delight
for making up time lost, or getting there faster than before. Later I called it
being a rushing maniac. Eventually the addiction is so strong that one begins
to feel a kind of panic when not moving. One begins to dread “getting stuck” as
in “Don’t get stuck behind that truck.” or, “Speed up to make the light so you
don’t get stuck.” Under this negative motivational pressure the driver begins
to take risks, and sometimes excessive risks, the result of which is to crash
and injure someone, besides oneself. I was shocked at
myself, saying: “How can you pretend to a decent person yet you’re willing to
take a risk of injuring another person.” My wife would frantically whisper from
her passenger side: “
5. The Conjugial Discipline Of Partnership Driving
Now when my wife and I are in the
car together, we are committed to driving as two instead of as one.
Since we
both prefer that I always be the driver, my wife [the passenger] is given by
mutual consent the right to react to my mistakes and to tell me what makes her
uncomfortable. I agreed to do this out of a religious motive after I felt a
crisis of conscience when I took to heart what my wife had been complaining
about: I drive scary and aggressively. For many years I denied the charges as
untrue and dismissed her complaints as excessive. She had no choice but to
endure the torture and degradation. Later my research uncovered the fact that
the majority of men in
I give
thanks to the Lord for shaking me out of this terribly sinful practice we all
tend to learn as children from our parents and the media, and then begin to
unconsciously practice it ourselves when we become drivers. Realizing all this,
I decided to undergo a self-modification program of my driving personality,
what may be called my “driving personality makeover.” It was a religious work
of daily discipline. Religious because I clearly saw that I
was continually sinning by continuing to accept my driving habits and
attitudes. During the first phase of my temptations I was enraged (in
hell). I resented my wife’s constant interventions—which she did in accordance
with our mutual agreement—thinking of them as her exaggerations and neuroses. I
would deny: “No, I didn’t do that.” I would minimize: “That’s not a big deal.”
I would punish her: I refused to talk to her for the rest of the trip. I would
alter my driving style for a few minutes, then revert.
This went on for several more years.
But I
continued hanging on to our Partnership Driving Contract, being mortally afraid
that if I didn’t I was rejecting the Lord. This religious motivation saved me
from continuing the evil habit. The second phase then ensued at some point and
I felt totally motivated to change and to honor my agreement with her. I now
welcomed her interventions. I actually felt safer letting her determine the
level of risk I should be taking (or not taking).
q
“Slow down!“
q
“Don’t threaten the pedestrians.”
q
“Put your signal on.”
q
“Stay in this lane.”
q
“Wave at that driver for letting you
in.”
q
“Fix your face—you look like you’re
mad.”
q
“Smile at the gate attendant.”
q
“Let’s leave sooner.”
q
“Let’s stop to ask for directions.”
q
“Don’t block the exit.”
q
“Don’t drive so close.”
q
“Stay in this lane.”
q
“Don’t take the turns so fast.”
q
“Think ahead where you have to
turn.”
q
“Is somebody honking at you?”
q
“Use the gear on the down slope.”
q
“Aren’t you going a little too
fast?”
q
“Stop driving like a cowboy drives
his horse.”
q
Etc.
After years
of discipline I can say today that I’m a reformed driver, loving traffic
instead of hating it, being supportive and helpful to other drivers rather than
competitive and nasty. But the temptations continue, when for example I’m late,
and I must then appeal to the Lord to save me once more. Thus it goes on.
Disciplines
have tremendous uses for building up the external (natural) vessels in our will
and understanding. The more we can develop this natural-rational mind, in its
will and in its understanding, the more we create suitable vessels to receive
the interior rational truths that infuse these mundane activities with
spiritual things (NJHD 51). It’s important to remember that building up the natural-rational
mind can be done for either a secular or religious motive. The Lord supplies power to the secular motive as well as the
religious, for this is a matter of spiritual liberty that is eternally
guaranteed by Him as part of everyone’s humanness. Though the secular motive
can drive perfectionism and self-mastery in any discipline, it can only do so
in a continuous fashion, trapped inexorably within the natural discrete degree.
But the religious motive for being disciplined produces self-mastery and
expertise in mundane activities that are in a form suitable to be external
“vessels” capable of containing spiritual motives and meanings.
The
expertise produced by the secular motive is not called a “vessel” for spiritual
things because it is restricted to the ultimate (natural) discrete degree.
Producing expertise and self-mastery in daily routines by means of a religious
motive is empowered by the Lord in a new way which allows the activity to
contain a spiritual discrete degree. This interior area is called the ”ground” within which the Lord implants
spiritual/celestial truths and new spiritual motives. But the secular products
of self-mastery and expertise, even though they may be indistinguishable (in
appearance) from the religious, are called the “earth” and this is not yet
ready for implantation by the Lord (AC 566).
Chapter 2, Section 15
15. The spiritual discipline of shopping
together
Why do
women like to go shopping together? It’s because they act like friends to each
other and women need that, depend on it for their mental balance. Yet it stands
to reason that for conjugial couples the husband should be the wife’s best
friend, otherwise how can they form a perfect unity? If the wife has to depend
on other women to achieve balance it’s only because the husband won’t play that
role in a sufficient degree. But he must learn how to be his wife’s best friend
if they are going to be a couple in heaven. But the
Writings tell us that wives in heaven also have meetings with each other (e.g.,
CL 293).
It is only
with one wife that truly conjugial love can exist, and consequently the same is
true of truly conjugial friendship, trust, potency and the linking of minds
that makes the two one flesh. (CL 333)
Since truly
conjugial love links the souls and hearts of two people, it is also combined
with friendship, and through this with trust, both of which it makes conjugial.
These are so far superior to other kinds of friendship and trust,
that just as this is the leading love, so these are the leading kinds of
friendship and trust. For a number of reasons, some of which will be revealed
in the second account of experiences at the end of this chapter, the same is
true of potency, from which the long duration of this love follows. It has been
shown in the Chapter on this subject ([VIII] 156-183) that truly conjugial love
makes a married couple one flesh. (CL 334) (See also CL 216)
Clearly,
the idea that women need women friends because their husbands can’t be that, is true only of unregenerate husbands. The pure
friendship a woman needs can best be provided by her husband for he alone can
enter into the inmost friendship that both are capable of. This inmost
friendship is at the same time romantic and sexual, while the others are not.
Hence it’s superior excellence and use for the wife and for the husband.
These remarks have been made so that you may acknowledge
that conjugial love of such surpassing quality exists, and it does so when one
woman alone is loved out of the whole sex. Can any intellect, sufficiently
trained to see the connections between matters, fail to deduce from this that a
lover, if he is constant in soul and at the inmost level in loving her, would
achieve the everlasting blessings which he promised himself before he gave his agreement
and promises himself when he does so? It was shown above that he actually does
achieve them, if he approaches the Lord. and under His
guidance lives a truly religious life.
Can anyone else come into a person's life from on high, and
confer inward heavenly joys on it, and pass them on to the following stages
-the more so, when He also at the same time confers constant virility? (CL 333)
Clearly
then, the
Learning
how to shop with one’s wife is a discipline that provides the husband with many
opportunities to play the role of being best friends. In the early phases of
this discipline the husband assumes that merely by going shopping with her accomplishes
the goal of becoming best friends. But this is not the case. Self-witnessing of
his sorties with her reveals this to the sincere man. What does he do? He
drives her around and walks with her into the shops. She loves this and
appreciates it, as long as he does it from her standards and not his own. He
will then be properly attired, patient and pleasant, and avoid embarrassing her
or worrying her. He will take charge of the packages and give her the feeling that he would rather her not carry anything. It’s a
luxury for her to have her husband take care of these side-issues so that her
shopping could be as pure an experience of delight as possible. A wife is
constantly oriented to receive what the husband wants to give her by which he
hopes to make her happy. This is one way she returns his love: “Darling, I will
let you make me as happy as you want to.”
Her
attitude is rational since love is the desire to make the other happy from
oneself (DLW 48). The happier he wants to make her from his services, the more
he loves her. And the wife is happy from her husband, he sees in her happiness
the goal of his desire. This makes his happiness. When the wife sees her
husband’s happiness, she sees in his happiness the fulfillment of her goal to
make him happy from herself. And he is happy from her since his happiness stems
from seeing her happiness that is from him. In this way they are entwined and
enmeshed in a crescendo to bliss that is only limited by what each can support
without bursting.
You will
note that this celestial happiness is not a feeling of contemplation or
celebration or reflection or expression. Rather it is a doing for each other.
Conjugial love is not a status achieved or bestowed, but a continual doing for
each other. The inner union of the two depends on this reciprocity of wanting
to make the other happy from oneself. This motive cannot exist in the
unregenerate or natural man. In the state prior to our regeneration we are all
natural and think externally about our wife. In that external state we allocate
our love on a continuum—she gets it sometimes, I get it at other times. Proof
of this is that the wife is never sure of her husband for he will suddenly blow
the deal by doing something that hurts her—get angry, get nasty, get obstinate,
get embarrassing, get unreliable. This hurts her conjugial which constantly
strives to weave a conjoint web of fibers so that they may be united in will
and understanding. This see-saw action is typical of alternating states of
regeneration by which the Lord is regenerating us (AC 847).
Eventually
the love battle ceases and the husband is at last oriented the same way as his
wife—toward internal union. Much remains that needs to
grow up before it can be functional, but the wife is patient from the Lord, and
waits for him to mature. But she can keenly feel the difference between before
and after. It’s completely obvious to her when she sees him not questioning her
judgment every minute which he used to do before.
Also, when
she sees him genuinely repentant after making her feel
bad with some response or reaction. When she points something out he is doing
to distress her, he no longer digs in his heels, refusing to acknowledge it.
Instead, he is profusely apologetic and sweet about it, and enacting instant
turn about. To her this is proof that he has changed. And she is willing to
believe this, hoping in her heart, that he will not relapse and break the bond
once more. Wives are always turned to the Lord and in their inner self they are
asking, “How long, Lord? How long?” By which the wife
is expressing not her impatience or complaint, but her inmost desire to fulfill
the Lord’s love through her conjugial union with her husband.
Since this
love comes from doing to each other, let us go back to the discussion on
shopping with your wife as a religious discipline of doing.
Observe
when into the outing you begin to feel tired, and when you begin to let it show
so she can see it. You yawn, you slow down, you look for chairs to sit on, your
eyes get glazed over, your face looks severe. All
these signs she takes note of, and she begins to worry. Pretty soon she feels
she must end the process lest her husband get angry or resentful. This
martyrdom approach on the part of the husband is the opposite of what he has to
achieve if she is going to end the shopping spree with the gladsome feeling
that she’s been out with her best friend.
Therefore
you must inhibit all these signs of boredom and compel yourself to put on all
the signs of enthusiasm and animation. This is what women friends do to each other and why they
need one another. By being together they experience a release of energy and
enthusiasm. They achieve this by mutual stimulation and reactivity. So you must
learn the steps and cumulate them so you make progress. A wife is very patient
and very gracious when she perceives her husband involved and interested in
learning her things. What does she do when she is shopping? You need to observe
her and learn compatible responses to her actions.
Does she
sit down like you want to? No. She keeps running, looking, comparing. Look at
her face: Does she look bored or sullen? No. She is excited and enthusiastic,
constantly being surprised or disappointed, and is affected in a continuous
unending stream of animation. This is what you must match. Make sure you are in
good physical shape so you’re not actually tired and can keep up without giving
out the signs that bother her. Observe how she looks at clothes on the rack.
She doesn’t spend time looking at the wrong sizes. She first notes how the
sizes run on the rack, then looks only in her size. You can help here for this
is pretty easy. Learn where to look on the garment or on the rack. Stick close
to her side. Do not go off on your own so she has to wonder where you are or if
she’s lost you. Listen to what she says. She carries on a constant stream of
relevant comments. Learn what they are:
q
The size (is it in her range)
q
The color (is it in her category of
what she would wear)
q
The sleeves (short, three quarters,
full length)
q
The collar (with, without, round,
scalloped)
q
The length and shape (does it cover
the butt, is it too tight)
q
The texture (is it scratchy, too
thin, too thick)
q
The fabric (denim, seersucker,
cotton, silk, wool, stretchy)
q
The ensemble (does it go well with what
matching pieces)
q
Etc.
I learned a
lot by listening to her and watching the Shopping channel where these details
are discussed with each item. I enjoy watching the Style channel with my wife,
along with the Food channel, and the many decorating and remodeling programs.
Never refer to or discuss the price, unless she raises the issue, and then just
listen. Let her decide to mention it or not, and do not volunteer your opinion.
Only hers counts anyway. Your opinion would be an unwanted intrusion. Friends
don’t intrude. If she hesitates, always encourage her. If she decides against
it, never try to change her mind. Try to go in the fitting room with her, if
store policy allows it. This is a wonderful treat—you’ll discover why if you do
it. Once inside, don’t just sit there. Make yourself useful. Hang up the
clothes she’s finished with. Help by unbuttoning and take the garments from her
as she takes them off. Control your voice so it remains subdued. You don’t want
her to worry and wonder if she’s making a spectacle. Be prepared to go out and
find another size. For this you must keep track where the pieces come from on
the various racks. And if you can’t find it right away, do not make her wait.
Consult the salesperson.
You must
exercise your discipline to be sufficiently animated at all times. For
instance, when you approve of some garment, accessory, or jewelry, be sufficiently enthusiastic. What is sufficient? You have
to magnify your approval and praise way beyond the point you think is enough.
You can’t just say, Very nice Honey—as if you’re talking about a jar or bottle.
This is Her! Your conjugial Sweetheart! So you have to
continue, not stop there.
Very very nice. Oh, yes, really. Wow, amazing how the two go together. It just looks
like something ordinary when you look at it first but then when you put it on
it takes on life. (Try to touch the garment at this point.) Very
impressive. How it fits together with your skirt! You’ve got a good eye, you picked out just the right shade. Look at them
together, it’s amazing, they make a kind of harmony, I can see it, yes. Excellent. Good show Honey. Yes.
That kind of thing. Choose your own style. You can never overdo it, but you can
easily under do it. Sometimes we might want to balk at what seems to us like a
gross exaggeration. “It’s insincere. It’s fake. It’s manipulative.” But the
truth is that these judgments and complaints are resistances from the
unregenerate male ego. The proof is easily to be witnessed in your wife’s
reaction and mood. Note carefully how she is acting and what she is expressing
as you spin off all your gracious speech acts. You are making her feel good.
She is not asking you, “Are you sincere?” She is
accepting it. Because it is you, her husband doing it, she feels legitimized as
who and what she is. She feels safe. She is grateful for it and she loves you
for it in her inner bosom.
Above all
remember that these little enactments you do with her must all be
“celestial”--pleasant and compatible, gracious and harmonious. One bad move of
impatience or disagreement throws the whole thing off like a break in the
singer’s voice at an important concert. It’s useless to think you can get away
with a 99 to 1 split (99 pleasant things and one unpleasant). Of course she is
forgiving and reasonable if you make a mistake, as long as you tenderly make up
for it immediately, meaning pronto (not five minutes later!). Keep in mind what
it is that she needs and wants from her best friend while shopping:
Animation (don’t lag behind, don’t take time to respond or react when she’s waiting for
it)
Joint focus (know what she is referring to, look at the garment,
the store, don’t get lost)
Appreciation
(show her you enjoy looking at her, tell her she has a good figure, praise her
taste, how that lime color goes well with her skin)
Confirmation
(always agree, nod vigorously, smile constantly, make your eyes big, say mild
things that are not controversial, expand on her statements instead of taking
them in another direction)
She will
feel that you are best friends when she feels legitimized in each of these
areas. Then suggest some fun thing to do when it’s over. Go for lunch or coffee
and don’t forget the cake. Postpone getting back to the usual topics of work,
house, children, and socials. Think about what friends do: they get each
other out of these usual topic routines. When you get home do not break the
contact right away by sitting down in front of the television or your computer.
Stay with her, it’s not over yet. She wants to unpack everything. She desires
you to be a witness to her excitement. She wants to start all over again with
each garment she brought home. She wants to try them on again before she wants
to take the labels off (in case she has to return something). Be there as an
audience. She wants that. Be animated and say something about each thing. Let
her calm down at the end of it all. Give her plenty of time. Genuine friends
don’t hurry one another, only sloppy friends do that. At last there comes a
point when she can let you go do your things. She know
all along that’s what you really feel like doing. She tries to hold on to you
for a while longer. Observe your own resistances at her mannerisms that are
calculated to keep you a little longer with her, and to herself. For that’s what she is feeling, if you haven’t spoiled it for her
by then. She is feeling the irresistible and delicious desire to conjoin
herself with you from within.
You are
then a happy and fortunate man, for she will bestow upon you her sweetness, her
passion, and her pure friendship. But the shopping ritual is not over yet. You
have to memorize while you still remember where a particular garment was bought
and other details about it. You have to recognize the item when she wears it
and mention where it was bought or some other detail about it. Friendship is
not on and off, like thirst or sexual arousal. It is on all the time. And it is
heaven on earth.
THE CONJUNCTION
OF SOULS AND MINDS BY MARRIAGE
MEANT BY THE
LORD'S SAYING THAT THEY ARE NO LONGER TWO BUT ONE FLESH
An inclination
and also a capacity for conjunction as though into one was
implanted in man and woman from creation, and man and woman still have this
inclination and capacity in them. That
this is so appears from the book of creation, and at the same time from what
the Lord said. In the book of creation,
which we call Genesis, we read:
Jehovah God
fashioned the rib, which He had taken from the man, into a woman, and He
brought her to the man. And the man
said, "This one, this time, is bone of my bones and flesh of my
flesh. She shall be called woman
('ishshah), because she was taken from man ('ish). For this reason a man shall leave his father
and mother and cling to his wife, and they shall be as one flesh." (Genesis 2:22-24)
The Lord also
said something similar in Matthew:
Have you not
read that He who made them from the beginning...male and female..., said,
"For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and cling to his
wife, and the two shall be as one flesh"?
Therefore they are no longer two, but one flesh. (Matthew 19:4-6)
(CL 156r)
Chapter 2, Section 15
15. Wife takes precedence over the children
For the
Knowing
this psychobiological condition the husband will see it rationally, not from
ego. He will see that he is “dead” set against it in his natural man, which is
unregenerate and filled with anti-conjugial and anti-feminine hatreds. This is
why reformation is necessary before regeneration can begin in adult life (AE
803; AC 8780; AC 3518:[2]; TCR 587). Reformation is
the husband’s realignment of his loyalties so that at the end of the struggle
of reformation he will put the wife on top. He will justify doing it by his
rational explanations which he obtained from the Writings in a similar way to
what I have written in this book. Now that he has put the wife at the very top
of all loyalties, and he is prepared to enforce this principle as a Divine
commandment, then he has completed his reformation. He is now ready to begin
regeneration. From then on the Lord works with him very closely and the man
knows it. His life is changed.
His wife is
now in charge of his willing and thinking, and he loves it. And if doesn’t love
it yet, he simulates loving it, and he persists and he looks to the Lord for
relief. Relief comes at some point when he lets go of the left over loyalties
for parents, children, and family that compete with the top loyalty in his
mind. Now they are below the loyalty he assigns to his wife. Now she can
continue her assiduous work of revealing to him his hidden weaknesses and
affections. Thus he makes progress toward regeneration and the Lord is able to
conjoin them more and more interiorly. These interior conjoining are celestial
and permanent. There is no way back; no way to undo them. Their very life now
depends on what’s in the conjoint self that the Lord is creating for their
heavenly union. The Lord would not create any interior union between them if
they weren’t going to be permanently conjoined.
The
husband’s unwillingness to reorder his loyalties from the unregenerate state is
a major impediment to his regeneration. Today a significant percentage of
children are raised in divorced families by a stepmother or stepfather. Health
professionals call it “step parenting” and “blended families.” The focus seems
always to be on the stepmother and the husband’s children from a prior
marriage. Movies commonly portray the meanness with which children treat the
stepmother. No one respects the stepmother and she gets to be blamed by
everyone, including the professional counselors who do not call it “blame” but
refer to it as the stepmother’s “adjustment problems” that she has to overcome.
Always left out of the equation is the real culprit—the husband and father
who hides behind the furniture when his wife is being abused by his children.
He does not come to her rescue as he ought to, and the male oriented society
allows him to get away with it. Here is one typical complaint:
I have been in a relationship with my husband for 14 years.
We were married this past year. Long story as to what took so long, don't ask.
My stepdaughter is 17 and soon off to college. She is good in school and I have
no issues with her mom. The problem is that I can't get close to her. She will
not look me straight in the eyes when speaking and tries to ignore me alone and
in front of others. Her dad is over reactive when I have a conversation about
all of this. I care for her and have always done things for her and tried to be
a nice as I can towards her. She recently told her dad that she doesn't like me
and she doesn't know why. She refuses to go to counseling. This stuff hurts and
I don't know what to do with it.
The other part of this is her dad will not allow us to sit
down and talk about it. Instead he sought out a close friend to work with his
daughter and try to get through this. I am just really so burnt and frustrated
with it all. I just want us to all get along and like/love each other and
appreciate today –
(“Stepparent Discussion Web” On the Web at www.cyberparent.com/disstep/disstep_frm.htm
Accessed in May 2002)
This man’s
cowardice is typical. I did it for years to my poor wife. She was devoted to
the care and welfare of my two children from a prior marriage. She did her best
in all sincerity and duty. She treated them with compassion and rationality,
but they paid her back with plenty of sassy talk, insults, rebellion,
uncooperativeness, and worst of all, trying to marginalize her in the family’s
decisions regarding everything. She did not count in their estimation since she
was not “family” by which they actually meant “blood.” This attitude was
reinforced and legitimized by their biological mother, my parents, my extended
family, neighbors, and even her own parents and
siblings. No one wants to respect a stepmother.
The most
remarkable and disturbing aspect of this gross injustice and mean attitude
towards stepmothers is that the husband will allow it to happen around him and
will give himself permission to “stay out of it.” I did it. For several years after
my remarriage I had the cruel attitude of allowing my wife and my two children
to “work it out” with each other. And even worse, I allowed the children to
come in between us in all sorts of objectionable ways. One destructive rule I
had was that “the children come first.” If my wife and I were having a tete a
tete, they were allowed to interrupt when they felt like it. When my wife was
speaking, they were allowed to interrupt her. When my wife and I decided to do
X, they were allowed to interfere and change things to Y. When they openly
accused my wife of X and Y, I let her go through the process of defending
herself as I was playing the neutral observer part. Even when the children were
not present, my prejudice in their favor led me to deny my wife her requests or
point of view on any matter regarding them.
Conjugial love
is the linking of minds; if therefore the mind of one goes in the opposite
direction to that of the other, their link is dissolved and together with it
their love fades. (CL 252)
The main office
which confederates and consociates the souls and lives of two partners, and
gathers them into a one, is their common concern in the education of their
children. In this the offices of the husband and those of the wife are
distinct, and at the same time conjoint. (CL 176)
1. The
Parenting Relationship Is Temporary And External
When I
started reading the Writings in my early forties, I began to learn the real
truth about parents and children, and about husband and wife.
The nature of
the love of infants and children with the spiritual, and its nature with the
natural, is manifestly perceived from parents [in the spiritual world] after
death. When they come there, most fathers call to mind their children who have
passed away before them, and the children are
presented to them and there is mutual recognition. Spiritual fathers merely
look at them and ask as to their state, rejoicing if it is well with them and
grieving if it is ill; and, after some conversation, instruction, and
admonition respecting heavenly moral life, they separate from them. But before
separation, they teach them that they are no longer to be remembered as fathers
because the Lord is the one only Father to all in heaven, according to His
words (Matt. 23:9); and that they themselves never remember them as their children.
But natural fathers, as soon as they realize that they are
living after death and recall to their memory the children who had passed away
before them and who also are presented to them according to their desire, are
at once conjoined with them, and they cling together like a bundle of sticks.
The father is then in continual delight at the sight of them and from
conversation with them. If it is told him that some of these children of his
are satans and have brought injury upon the good, he
nevertheless keeps them in a circle around him, or in a group in front of him.
If he himself sees that they inflict injury and do evil deeds, he still pays no
heed and does not dissociate any of them from himself. Therefore, lest so
harmful a company continue, they are of necessity sent together into hell.
There, in the presence of his children, the father is put under guard and his
children are separated, each being sent away to the place proper to his life.
(CL 406)
First, I
was amazed to learn that parents and children are not necessarily together in
the afterlife because they have a different spiritual constitution, as the
above quote indicates. The reason is that in the spiritual world incompatible
affections prevent co-presence (HH 194). In the natural world the external
environment compels people to be together physically regardless of whether they
inwardly have the same affections or opposing ones. Not so in the spiritual
world. This put things in a different perspective for me regarding loyalties
because I could see that my children were resisting the affections to which my
wife and I were committed. I continued to be the same father outwardly to them,
but inwardly I was not connected to them. The Lord commands us to be “spiritual
fathers” and not establish inward connections with our children who inwardly
resist and reject our spiritual affections, ideas, and loyalties.
Clearly,
the wife is more of a neighbor to us than children, and therefore we ought to
love the wife more than our children (see Chapter 9 Section 15).
I also
learned from the Writings that it is an unregenerate and hurtful attitude to
elevate “blood” to an important consideration in human relationships. It is
based on false reasoning and evil motives. It was instructive for me to
contrast the three portions of the Word with regards to how they each treat of
the subject of “blood.” In the Old Testament, the level of thinking was
corporeal, so that blood ties became paramount in relationships and politics.
Blood was imbued in their mind with spiritual significance, on account of which
the Lord permitted them to have a religion that involved blood rituals such as
sacrificing animals and sprinkling of the blood on the altar, the ground, and
the clothes as a sign of holiness and Divine acquiescence (AC 10057). At that
level of thinking, the worship is external, ritualistic, representative, not
genuine and spiritual. The worship or religion becomes spiritual only when the
external worship has an internal acknowledgement in it (AC 1094).
This is not
the case when the outward ritual or performance is considered to be the
essential of the worship or its sacredness. In that level of thinking, to love
the neighbor means to love those who are of one’s blood. The Lord in the Old
Testament frequently complains about this mentality calling it a religion of
the lips only, and frequently lamented that He does not want sacrifices but
obedience from them—which they would not suffer themselves to do (1 Sam.
15:22).
The New
Testament brought a more interior worship and the meaning of blood was altered.
Now the neighbor was to be anyone who is in need of charity. Blood relations
were no longer determinative. Blood sacrifices ceased as a form of worship.
What was internally in the mind became more important spiritually than what the
body did. Furthermore, the union between husband and wife was reaffirmed as
sacred and eternal. That relationship became spiritually more important than
the relationship between parents and children. This new level of thinking
weakened or eliminated among Christians the despotic power of the extended
tribal family. Nevertheless the secular nonduality of society continued to
maintain and foster “blood ties” as exemplified by inheritance laws and the
common belief that “blood is thicker than water” or that “You don’t say no to
family.”
These cultural slogans reflects the attitude that familial loyalty ought to be put
above other loyalties in relationships. Today in
The
Writings put inheritance, blood, and family on an entirely new basis. In it we
learn that children inherit from parents both good and evil. The good in our
children is to be loved, but the evil is not to be loved. If we love the
children as to their person, that is, because of the blood tie, then we love
both the good and the evil in them. It is forbidden in the
But blood
ties do not count in the afterlife (CL 250). The spiritual family is among
those who share the same love for the Lord and acknowledge the same truths (AC
3815[2]). Love of the neighbor is to be exercised in proportion to the quality
of good in the neighbor, not at all in proportion to blood, genes, tradition,
ethnic background, or culture (see Chapter 6 Section 7). And above all, the
Writings reveal the true relationship between husband and wife, that it is the
highest and holiest of all loves (CL 61, 270). There is never a doubt in the
The same
applies to one’s parents. The wife comes before the parents. What about the
Fourth Commandment of honoring parents? Here is how the Writings discuss it:
THE FOURTH COMMANDMENT.
HONOR THY FATHER AND THY MOTHER, THAT THY DAYS MAY BE
PROLONGED, AND THAT IT MAY BE WELL WITH THEE UPON THE EARTH.
So reads this
commandment in Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16. In the natural sense, which is that of
the letter, "to honor thy father and thy mother" means to honor
parents, to be obedient to them, to be devoted to them, and to return thanks to
them for the benefits they confer, which are that they provide food and
clothing for their children, and so introduce them into the world that they may
act in it as civil and moral persons; and introduce them also into heaven by
means of the precepts of religion, thus providing both for their temporal
prosperity and their eternal happiness.
All this
parents do from a love which they have from the Lord, in whose stead they act.
In a relative sense it means that if parents are dead, guardians should be
honored by their wards. In a broader sense, to honor the king and magistrates, is meant by this commandment, since these
provide for all in general the necessities which parents provide in particular.
In the broadest sense this commandment means that men should love their
country, since it supports and protects them, therefore it is called fatherland
from father. But to country, king, and magistrates honor must be rendered by
parents and by them be implanted in their children. (TCR 305)
This
passage teaches that parenting is from the Lord and that we ought to honor the
Lord in what parents do by taking care of children. There is no warrant in this
passage of loving the parent from person rather than from the good in the
person. Our loyalty to parents is to be no other loyalty than our loyalty to
the Lord. As indicated by the earlier passage quoted above regarding parents
meeting their children in the afterlife: “Spiritual fathers merely look at them
[their children] and ask as to their state, rejoicing if it is well with them
and grieving if it is ill; and, after some conversation, instruction, and
admonition respecting heavenly moral life, they separate from them. But before
separation, they teach them that they are no longer to be remembered as fathers
because the Lord is the one only Father to all in heaven (CL 406).”
The
parent-child relationship is therefore not a permanent one. It depends on
whether their spiritual affections are compatible. In this life the
compatibility of natural affections determines the closeness of
relationship with grown up children, but in the afterlife the natural
affections fall away as the deeper inward affections come out to the
surface. Now it becomes visible what are the real affections parents and
children have of reach other, and they may be compatible or in opposition, in
love for one another or in enmity and hatred. It was all along these deeper
affections for each other that lay hidden within, but not dormant. The
affections we have in the interior man pull the strings, as it were, while the
outward man plays the part that leads to the interior man’s real affections and
real delights and real values and perspective.
The
Writings describe the family relationships that existed on this earth during
the civilization of the “
After many
generations, however, there arose a new and deadly lifestyle philosophy
represented in the Old Testament by Adam eating of the fruit of the tree of
knowledge of good and evil (DP 241; AC 202). This refers to the severing of
one’s spiritual ties to the Lord and His commandments, replacing it with ideas
and notions concocted by the natural self separated from the spiritual mind.
This new deadly lifestyle philosophy is represented by the snake. This is the
voice in us of the corporeal self that is incapable of forming thoughts at the
rational level. At this level of consciousness we are informed only by the
sensuous input from the physical environment. All our ideas and concepts are
formed into a material shape and meaning, not rational. Hence we deny the
reality of the spiritual mind and world, plunging ourselves into spiritual
darkness. In that state we live our life in a demented style bringing to
society wars, crimes, and sicknesses, and worse of all, calling these things
true, while the genuine truth is called falsity, and rejected.
2. Moses, Paul,
And Swedenborg
Phases Of Marriage
The
ancients wrote the details of this history down in the language of
correspondences, still known in those days, and Moses copied a portion of it
from ancient sacred texts (De Verbo 15; SS 103). The Garden of Eden story, when
read through genuine correspondences, is the history of the race’s mental
evolution of consciousness, its high rational state by creation, and its fall
to the low state due to their confirmed rejection of rationality. This
affects us directly today since individual biography recapitulates racial
history. We inherit everything that precedes! (xx)
This conclusion also follows from the fact that the Word has layers of meaning,
the inmost being about the Lord’s Mind, the intermediate about the history of Churches
and their civilizations, while the outmost is about the “church within,”
meaning the conscious mind that directs our willing and thinking in daily life.
These three layers of meaning occur together, one within the other, as
specified by the literal words, that is, “contained in
them as vessels.” Since there is this objective parallelism of the internal
series in the Word, it follows that individual biography recapitulates racial
history.
What then
happened to the
The
theistic science facts revealed in the Writings will allow future research to
develop a genuine psychology of the mind with its laws of development. What we
then can do for children will be immeasurably better than what we do today to
help them regenerate. Only by regeneration can the inward evil we are born with
be removed by the Lord. But He can do this only to the extent that we clean up
our outward act as-of self, that is, live a life of good in accordance with our
conscience. For the
That by the
"Nephilim" are signified those who through a persuasion of their own
loftiness and preeminence made light of all things holy and true, appears from
what precedes and what follows, namely, that they immersed the doctrinals of
faith in their cupidities, signified by the "sons of God going in unto the
daughters of man, and their bearing unto them." Persuasion concerning self
and its phantasies increases also according to the multitude of things that
enter into it, till at length it becomes indelible; and when the doctrinals of
faith are added thereto, then from principles of the strongest persuasion they
make light of all things holy and true, and become "Nephilim."
That race,
which lived before the flood, is such that they so kill and suffocate all
spirits by their most direful phantasies (which are poured forth by them as a
poisonous and suffocating sphere) that the spirits are entirely deprived of the
power of thinking, and feel half dead; and unless the Lord by His coming into
the world had freed the world of spirits from that poisonous race, no one could
have existed there, and consequently the human race, who are ruled by the Lord
through spirits, would have perished.
They are therefore now kept in a hell under as it were a misty
and dense rock, under the heel of the left foot, nor do they make the slightest
attempt to rise out of it. Thus is the world of spirits free from this most
dangerous crew, concerning which and its most poisonous sphere of persuasions,
of the Lord's Divine mercy hereafter. These are they who are called
"Nephilim" and who make light of all things holy and true. Further
mention is made of them in the Word, but their descendants were called
"Anakim" and "Rephaim." That they were called
"Anakim" is evident from Moses:
There we saw
the Nephilim, the sons of Anak, of the Nephilim, and we were in our own eyes as
grasshoppers, and so we were in their eyes (Num.
That they were
called "Rephaim" appears also from Moses:
The Emim dwelt
before in the land of Moab, a people great, and many, and tall, as the Anakim,
who also were accounted Rephaim, as the Anakim, and the Moabites call them Emim
(Deut. 2:10-11).
(AC 581)
Every
This
initiated my “Paul phase” of religion and marriage. I made the wife’s
subservience to me a matter of religion. My wife should obey my wishes regarding
everything, especially my ideas of loyalty to the children. My second and
current wife, as a stepmother, was put in double jeopardy, once as a woman, and
once as “not their real mother,” or, the more politically correct phrase “not
their biological parent.”
When I started reading the Writings and making it the basis of my
thinking, I entered the “Swedenborg phase” of being a father and husband. Now for the first time my
primary loyalty to my wife became a religious commandment. I had to repent
of the awful years of injustice and cruelty which I forced her to endure. I had
to retrain myself in how I talked to her in front of the children, on the phone
with the children, and when they were not present but were the topic between
us. It took years for me to retrain my habitual speech acts so that what my
wife said about the children could now count in my mind. I gradually began to
see my children in a different light, in the spiritual light of the Writings,
which gives a revealing perception of the children’s unregenerate nature and
character. I saw them as selfish, egotistical, ungrateful, rebellious,
disorderly, disrespectful, disdainful, and disinterested in what we as parents,
thought was important. They acted like we were under
their ultimatum—“You accept us as we are or you won’t be a significant part of
our life.”
No doubt
this is how I was as a grown up child to my parents. Unregenerate children,
when they become adults, are unregenerate adults, and unregenerate adults are
filled with hidden inherited evils that cannot be removed until reformation and
regeneration, midway through life. The evils we see in our children are often
the evils we have ourselves, which we pass on to them by heredity and
lifestyle. We are not to love these evils in ourselves or in our children (TCR
469).
By looking
to the Lord I was able to free myself from this spiritually pernicious
attachment to the idea of “blood ties.” I love my children in proportion to
the good they love and the truth they value. It is only their good that I
am to love. To the extent they do not love and value what my wife and I love
and value, to that extent our love for them is curtailed. Parental love is not
unconditional love since this would be harmful to the children’s mental and
spiritual development. When parents love themselves in their children, they
are willing to accept the children’s faults and habits of misdemeanor and
insensitivity. They are therefore internally tied to their children, the
result of which is that in the afterlife they are connected and inseparable
from each other (CL 406). If the children turn out to be unregenerate while the
parents have undergone reformation and regeneration, then the parents are in
big trouble! They cannot leave their children who cannot enter heaven. They are
lambs tied to a wolf (xx).
You can see
what unimaginable horrors and suffering the parents are then going to undergo.
This is done under the supervision of the angels (xx). Eventually, after much
agony, the parents are willing to let go of their internal ties to their
children. Thus freed, they can enter their eternal happiness in heaven.
3. Blood-Love
For Children
Is Spiritually Hurtful
Let
therefore parents beware that they ought to love their children not as “blood”
or “as to person,” that is, loving them as part of themselves in them. A
documentary I recently saw on television showed the sad fate of runaway
children living on the street. Some of the parents were interviewed on camera
and said, “He is my own flesh and blood. A piece of my soul knocked off. Of
course I love him. Yes, I want him back. He is bad, disobedient, robs people,
uses drugs but I love him. He is mine.” And other such
things. The point is not that they wanted their child back, but the
reasoning in their mind that they cannot but love themselves or their own in
their child. This mentality is spiritually hurtful.
Rather than
this, let parents follow the Lord’s commandment as to the ways we are required
to love our neighbor: not as to person, but as to the good in the neighbor (HH
390). The good in each neighbor is the Lord Himself, regardless of the
individual’s acknowledgment or knowledge of this fact. The Second of the
Two Great Commandment is: Love your neighbor. Prior to the Second Coming of the
Lord it was hidden from the world that “love your neighbor” doesn’t mean love
your neighbor as to person, that is, according to blood ties, religious ties,
national ties, friendship ties, or any other tie that exists socially between
one person and another. In the Writings the Lord has at last revealed that His
Commandment means to love the good in the neighbor (TCR 416). The reason is
that loving the good in the neighbor is to love Him. And the more we love
Him the more He can bless us with good, which is His desire and longing, His
Love.
You can see
from this that the Two Great Commandments are both about loving the Lord. The
First Great Commandment is that we must love Him more than anything else. The
Second Great Commandment is that we must love the good from Him that is in
every individual. Thus, by obeying both commandments it is the Lord alone that
we love. Even the Lord must not be loved as to Person, meaning as to His
Natural Body by itself, without loving the things in it (D.WIS. 10, DP 94). The
angels love the Lord by loving first the Lord’s Rational, and thence the Lord’s
Natural. To love the good and the true is to love the Lord’s Rational.
If on the
other hand we love the neighbor as to person we do not love the Lord. We love
the person, and the person’s proprium or selfhood, and this is a devil from
birth, dead, offensive in every way to heaven, and unable to be regenerated
(xx). Loving this devil is to hate the Lord. There is no in between! The
reformed and regenerated self is no longer the old proprium, but a vessel for
the Lord to dwell in. It is filled with good, and therefore we can and must
love it. Now you can see in what trouble parents may be who love their children
because of blood, that is, because they see their own inner person in them. And
not just from blood, since they may be adopted children, but from upbringing
and the habits of willing and thinking parents inculcate in the children as
part of themselves in them.
To love the
good and the bad in one’s children is egotistical, not altruistic. It is anti-social
for it hurts the community when justice and favoritism is practiced out of
loyalty to blood or self-interest, instead of loyalty to the common good of
society. The same can be said about friendships that develop into internal ties
(TCR 446). It is only with our spouse that we can enter into an inner tie.
This is because heaven can be entered only as a married couple that formed
themselves into a conjugial union (see the discussion in Chapter 9 Section 1).
My feeling
of duty and compassion remain for my children, but not my unconditional loyalty
or permissiveness to them—which is what I think they would prefer as a sign of
unconditional love and acceptance. It was the same with my parents during the
last two decades while they were still in this world. They often complained to
their other adult children about my filial “coldness.” I feel I should have
been more compassionate and steadfast in the little rituals of respect like
sending birthday cards, photographs, and more phone calls. I do not at this
time feel a longing to see them again in the other world. But I can imagine
that they might want to see me, and in that case I will see them and express my
respect for what they had done for me, that is, for the uses they were
motivated to teach me and the sacrifices they endured for my sake. Will my
children desire to see me in the afterlife? I do not know the answer.
A reader of
this document reminded me that there is such a thing as inherited goodness, not
just inherited evil, and this is something we should honor in our parents since
all good anywhere is from the Lord alone:
For the good into which man is born he derives from his
parents, either father or mother; for all that which parents have contracted by
frequent use and habit, or have become imbued with by actual life until it has
become so familiar to them that it appears as if natural, is transmitted into
their children, and becomes hereditary. (AC 3469)
In honoring
this good in our parents we must not honor them as to person because love of
neighbor is love of the good in the neighbor (see also Chapter 6 Section 7).
The
What
protects the
Another
common danger zone in parent-filial love ties is what we do about feeling
favoritism and exclusivity for one child rather than another. In the
unregenerate state we sometimes express guilt feelings about loving one child
more than another. The guilt comes from doing something spiritually injurious
to the child one favors or loves in person more than another. Our behavior
helps to strengthen the child’s implanted seed of blood loyalty. That child
will go on and practice this orientation with friends and later with their own
children. I discussed just above what trouble those people get into from doing this.
Instead we must obey the Lord’s commandment, and we are required to teach our
children the same. We do this by loving the good in them, not the person.
Besides
favoritism, another danger zone is exclusivity according to person. Secular
psychology has impressed upon our culture the practice of spending “quality
time” with each child alone. In general, this is a potentially good practice,
depending on how the parent interprets and enacts “quality time.” Parents may
be tempted to turn quality time into exclusivity relationships. This means
acting like what they have together is exclusive of others rather than merely
intimate or close. What is being accomplished when a parent maintains this kind
of exclusivity with a child? It creates an inner spiritual tie between them,
person as to person. This is injurious because all inner ties must be
exclusively reserved for the conjugial spouse (CL 214).
No
person to person love is allowable in the
For
additional discussion specifically on religious phases of development
in the
Chapter 2, Section 16
16. The spiritual discipline of metanoid
television watching
If they are
not elevated together, love or the will is defiled in and by the intellect.
This follows, since if love is not elevated, it remains impure, as we said in
nos. 419, 420 above. And as long as it remains impure, it loves things that are
impure, such as the practices of vengeance, hatred, deceit, blasphemy, and
adultery. For these are then its affections, which we call lusts, and it
rejects things having to do with charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness, and
chastity. (SE 421)
Consider
the five practices of “defiled” affections listed here: “vengeance, hatred,
deceit, blasphemy, and adultery.” Does that remind you of anything in relation
to watching television? These are the practices portrayed for hours on every
day and night on TV, or, which is similar in content, movies people take home
every week from their neighborhood video rental store. It’s the same with the
blockbuster movies shown in thousands of theaters every week and viewed by
enthusiastic crowds of millions every week end. The TV news programs regularly
show the rankings of these blockbusters every week end. The top three always
bring in between 20 and 50 million dollars per week end. It is the same with
the top ranking novels nationally, each being bought by millions weekly. It is
the same with the video games being played by millions of children and
teenagers. A total blanketing of the people’s intellect has taken place in
Western Christian nations. The practices of defiled affections have become the
entertainment of the age.
Note that
these defiled affections are called lusts, and that they reject the five
purified affections: charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness, and chastity. A
spiritual battle for the hearts and minds of the people is going on. The arena
of entertainment is the portrayal of the battle of evil and good in our
minds—this is the battle of nonduality and dualism:
vengeance, hatred, deceit, blasphemy, and
adultery
and
charity, justice, honesty, truthfulness,
and chastity
Nonduality
wants to line up all ten items on one continuum from left to right as a
realistic image of the human mind. This is the level of thinking of the natural
mind. But the rational mind sees an absolute and discrete duality between the
five evil affections and the five good affections. The evil affections are from
hell but the good affections are from heaven. All human affections are either
from hell or from heaven (NJHD 237). Therefore, the discipline of watching
TV and movies consists in remaining conscious of this dualism. Similarly with all the forms of entertainment and mass media
exposure.
I observed
that I watch TV in two distinct mental states—conscious and unconscious. In
general people give high preference ranks in entertainment value for shows,
movies, novels, and games that are absorbing. What is being “absorbed” in a
dramatic presentation? It consists in losing oneself, so to speak, and living
in the excitement of the drama. Obviously this is a spiritual phenomenon having
to do with how the spirit or mind is animated.
But the
individual does not think of the spiritual aspect but of the corporeal
aspect—the excitement, the sensations, the emotions, the fascination, the
surprise, the scare, the sensory information or vista, etc. These are corporeal
events and bring consciousness down to that level. The rationality drops away
because it is considered to be in the way. People enjoy sitting in the dark in
a theater or nightclub and becoming absorbed in another world that does not
require rationality, salvation, and God. It’s almost as if they declare Time
Out from reality that is heavy and disturbing. They want to forget for awhile
the worries and the realities. It is felt like a relief. And so on. These are
the reasons we learn to give for why we are consumers of entertainment.
I observed
that when I get absorbed in a scene on TV, even for a minute or two, the event
or dialog later replays itself over and over in my mind, and I get involved in
modifying, enriching, expanding, or continuing some scene in various ways. I
asked myself what drives these compulsive imagings and memories?
It seems that the explanation may have something to do with being “absorbed” a
word that means
to take in and make part of an
existent whole; to suck up or take up (a
sponge absorbs water); to engage or engross wholly (absorbed in thought)
Almost all, if not all, entertainment is filled with portrayals of evil things, regardless whether it also portrays virtuous things. When we are absorbed in a book, movie, or song our mind sucks up the negative content that portrays infernal loves and falsities. Once these are in, they “make part of an existent whole” and this the natural self. The natural self is unregenerate and contains evil things and good things, though in separate layers for the Lord will not allow them to be mixed (DP 16). The evil things and the good things become part of the “existent whole.” Now the evil things with their falsities start having their deleterious effects in the natural mind by stimulating certain thoughts,