Marriage

Question: What is the purpose of marriage?

Aaron: What is the purpose of anything in your lives? This earth is the schoolroom for your souls as you pass through this human stage of your journey. As with anything else, your marriage is meant to teach you the lessons you have incarnated to learn. They are often lessons of love, of giving selflessly, of sharing with another.

You have also chosen marriage because of the support you offer to one another. You are both on the same path. Your recognition of each other's efforts teaches you both. Ideally, your marriage partner is one with whom you can be honest about both your needs and your dreams. You can help one another see with clearer perspective, lifting each other beyond the earth plane to see the path more clearly.

I say "ideally." Obviously, many of your marriages are not ideal. There is anger, blaming, bitterness and pain. I ask you to stop and see why you have chosen this. Yes, I hear you wailing "It's not my fault." I must remind you that you are always responsible for your choices. You are never in a situation that you have not agreed to, at some level of your being.

Stop your blaming for a moment. Quiet yourself and look within. There must be no self-judgment, just clear seeing. What are you learning from this situation? You have made this choice, consciously or unconsciously. If you do not understand why, if you continue to cry "It's not fair" and place all the blame on another, then you will not learn what you came to learn. So quiet yourself and look, compassionately but honestly, at what's there.

What did you come to learn? I cannot answer this for you, but if you can still the blaming voice a bit, you will hear the answer within yourself. It may not be pretty to see your misunderstandings. It may be painful. Treat yourself with kindness, and forgive yourself for your mistakes. Then honestly try to grow from what you've learned. The same misunderstandings will occur over and over. Learn to greet them with a lighthearted "Oh, you again," a gentle reminder to reexamine and see where you have lost the path.

You are here to gain maturity and assume responsibility for your selves, so you may grow into mature compatibility with your Creator. Your past lives are your soul's infancy and childhood. Many of you now are adolescents. You long for the freedom of adulthood, but fear to give up the dependent child in yourselves. While one part of you longs to grow up, another part of you trembles in fear of the responsibility.

Marriage is one of your tools here. You cannot learn lessons of responsibility and love in a vacuum. The closeness of a living relationship with your spouse, your children, or your parents provides you with ample place for practice. Before you can practice you must know what you need to practice. Most assuredly it is not blaming one another. Look within yourselves for the answers.

Are you ready to leave a painful marriage? Stop a minute and ask yourself two questions. Did I learn what I came to learn? If so perhaps you are ready to put the pain behind you and move on to new learning. If not, perhaps you are running away from the pain, but you will not leave it behind with the divorced partner. You'll carry it with you into new relationships until finally you are ready to face your own responsibility for your own learning.

At this point, ask the second question. Is it too painful? Perhaps you know that you have something to learn, but simply cannot face the pain of the situation. It is not wrong, in any moral sense, to move on. Know that you have these lessons still to learn. Perhaps in the next learning situation that you choose you'll be more ready and the road will be less rocky.

Let us return to those marriages where the love outbalances the pain. You say there is no pain? You are not being honest! You are suppressing these feelings. No matter how much love, there is also occasionally pain. But the love in any close human relationship can far outweigh the pain. It is a much more pleasant way to learn.

Your learning does not need to be painful. When you face the same lessons over and over, and do not listen to your inner voice, then the lessons are made stronger to collect your attention and direct you to focus on the needed learning. When you are in harmony with yourself, and in touch with the voice within, you develop the courage and honesty to face your issues and learn what you have come to learn. Then, truly, your learning can be joyful.

A loving marriage between two beings in harmony with themselves provides the foundation for deep learning. The lessons of love are one of the most important for you on this physical plane. Love enables you to transcend ego, to move beyond the needs of self interest and to serve others. It is a path to the understanding of your oneness with all other beings and with God. While there will be occasions of conflict in even the most loving marriage, you will both know that of God in the other. Both beings will stretch themselves to be all that they can be, and will support this effort in the other.

The love from such a marriage shines like a radiant sun on all whom it touches, giving warmth and a brilliant glow that lights the path for all who come near. Those involved in such a marriage are deeply blessed with the giving and receiving of love.