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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Soulmate, Myself:
Omega Point

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Kairissi. I think the most thrilling insights come from areas that are old-hat to us.

Elenchus. We believe we know everything about it.

K. And then suddenly the heavens open and it’s a brand new subject for you.

E. (small smile) I’m thinking of Jamie and Landon…

E. I always want to break out laughing when he says, so seriously, “I know everything about you.” And then, not long after – wham!

K. (softly laughing) The deader they are, the harder they fall… But, actually, this isn’t what I wanted to talk about.

E. And what would you like to talk about?

K. Finding a thrilling new insight from old plowed ground is sort of the flip-side of another marvel: It’s living in the joy and wonder of a life-principle, and you try to explain it to others, but no one gets it.

E. Tell me what’s on your mind.

K. When I mention it, it won’t seem special because we’ve been over this many times. But…

E. (silence)

K. … it’s the “not for a reason” precept.

E. What are you seeing, Kriss?

K. (sighing) It’s hard to express why I should bring this up, as we both know about it. But as I look at the couples in the world, those newly making compact and those who’ve been together for some time, it’s very clear to me that they come together on the basis of “make me happy.”

E. It’s like two companies merging, isn’t it? They wouldn’t do the deal if there weren’t profits and efficiencies to be reaped.

K. The two boards would never approve the corporate marriage without this. Why would they? – unless the two business entities could do better via projected synergies.

E. Elizabeth’s “not for a reason” just doesn’t make sense to the average couple; especially, the newly engaged.

K. And yet, I’ll bet if I were to explain “not for a reason” to them, they’d say, “Well, that just means I feel happy being with this person. There’s no specific reason why. I just feel so happy with the whole prospect. Isn’t this what ‘not for a reason’ means?”

E. And you would say, close, kinda, but not exactly.

K. The problem is, when a couple talks like this, they don’t really believe in “not for a reason.” What they believe in is “make me happy.”

E. What they really want is those projected synergies and efficiencies.

K. You can’t talk them out of it. They all believe that, of the many billions of marriages in the history of planet Earth, theirs will be the one that beats the system.

E. They believe that they will find true happiness. They “know” this by the way that they feel – at the moment. And no one who feels that good could be wrong, they tell themselves.

K. As you’re explaining this just now, I feel overwhelmed, all over again, at the supreme deceptiveness that is the egoic marriage.

E. Kriss… if they were of a mind to listen… what would you tell them?

K. You can’t marry someone unless it’s “not for a reason.”

E. “And what does that mean?” they will say.

K. I probably shouldn’t talk to them. With their present state of mind, they can’t hear me.

E. The “wanting” and “needing” of the Little-Me ego is too much “static on the line” right now. But, if they could hear, what would you say?

K. (sighing) You can’t marry somebody so that he can “make you happy.”

E. “But why not?” they will demand.

K. Because true happiness and joy come from within. You can’t get it from another person. Those who try always end up disappointed. Instead, you must marry only on the basis of “not for a reason.”

E. “But, I feel so good when I’m around this person.”

K. That’s just the Little-Me Ego temporarily feeling better about itself with the prospect of an “addition” or “enhancement" to its needy self. Soon you’ll discover that you can’t “add” anything to yourself to fill up the emptiness inside.

E. Well, with your little pep-talk here no one would ever get married.

K. That’s pretty much what they said to Jesus with his Mathew 19 teaching on marriage and divorce.

E. Tell us more about “not for a reason.”

K. When you do this the right way, being excited about the other person is not, as Dr. Campbell used the phrase, just a “zeal of the organs.” Further, the primary attraction will not be based on any good attributes of his “resume.” Don’t worry - in a good match, there will be plenty of fine traits but this is not why you'll want to be with him.

E. (small smile) Now you’re just confusing all of us.

K. It’s hard to make this clear because pretty much everyone, in an unenlightened state, is operating from the ego. But let me continue, though not many will believe me. Where was I?

E. You were telling us to avoid the “zeal of the organs.”

K. There’s nothing wrong with bio-attraction, and there will be a good deal of it in the right match, but this is not the foundation of it all. And that’s the problem. For almost all unions, that’s all they have; for a while.

E. And what do they really need?

K. They need to want each other “not for a reason.” This means, as Petula Clark sang, you might not like him so much at first, or at times, but, even so, you'll find that you can’t live without him. Sometimes, part of you might feel like sandpaper grating against his spirit; and, in the beginning, he might make you so mad; yet, through it all, the attraction to him just won’t go away.

E. Some would say that this could be “compulsive obsessive” behavior.

K. It could. We discussed this in “Of Human Bondage.” And to overcome this possibility of self-deception, one needs to go deeply within to see what this attraction is made of.

E. (silence)

K. When you love someone “not for a reason,” you’ll want to be with him not just so he can “make you happy.” That doesn’t cover it. Loving someone authentically, if you can't live your life with him, is like envisioning the future as a gigantic black pit of grief and despair. And it's not because you'll miss a "pretty face" so much; that's part of it, of course, but the real reason is that you need your true mate simply to live life at all, as you would have no spirit in you to do all that you need and want to do; even more, without him - you will not survive "the terror of eternal life."

E. I’m reminded of Elizabeth’s dicta concerning her famous phrase. She said that if a proposition contains within itself its own support and source of being, then, there it stands, forever, as in immortality.

K. Exactly right. No one can move it; not even the two lovers. If you marry the “perfect resume” to “make you happy,” what happens when he changes, or loses his flashy job, or grows older – or, worse for you, what happens when all this mutability occurs for you, and now, suddenly, he doesn’t want you anymore.

E. At that point, "make me happy” is no longer possible.

K. And that’s why the lasting marriage, even, the eternal marriage, is built upon “not for a reason.” It’s constructed on an “immortality,” the lack of any external cause of attraction. Yes, there will be these, but this is not why you want to be with him; or he, with you.

E. The “zeal of the organs” means that two bodies have fallen in love. But bodies change. The real love is rooted in the soul, a soul-affinity. And things of the soul do not change.

K. I know of someone who, when he was young, wrote to his fiancé 100 letters in the 100 days prior to their wedding. In each letter he listed an attribute of her that he liked. He was sincere. He meant what he wrote. But among these 100 admired attributes, there was no discussion of deeper soul bond. As a young man, he knew nothing of this mystical connection and true love. The marriage later ended in divorce.

E. (silence)

K. There was no sense of “immortality” to what they had together. It could not stand on its own; only externals, only the "perfect resume," supported it. The 100 good things he liked were expressions of his hope that she might “make me happy.” This can never work. Instead of the 100 traits, the 100 reasons, if they’d been a real match, it would have been far better if he’d been able to seek for the marriage, and her, “not for a reason.”

E. As a footnote to the above discussion of the “100 letters,” unlike the man talking to “the Sage,” this was not a case of “apparent” good qualities: she was a genuinely good person, and the qualities were real. There really were "100" good traits.

K. But it should be pointed out that marriage is more than a “mutual admiration society.” and a resume contest. She may be genuinely virtuous, but if her “name is not written on your soul,” then she doesn’t belong to you, and then it's all no good, and you’re headed for existential crisis.

E. Yes - that's what happened to him. But Kriss, I just thought of something else.

K. Please, Elenchus, share your insight.

E. We offered an analogy of two companies merging, but only if “profits, synergies, and efficiencies” might be forthcoming.

K. “Make me happy” on the corporate level.

E. I think this analogue is very germane to our discussion. Here’s what I see. After John and Mary return from their honeymoon and settle into a routine of daily living, invariably they will sense “the bloom is off the rose.”

K. This might occur even during the honeymoon.

E. The “wanting and needy” little ego does not long delay in realizing that it will not be receiving all that it'd hoped for.

K. Buyer’s remorse.

E. When this happens, when John and Mary are faced with the grim reality that “make me happy” will not be unfolding as expected, they tend to emotionally seal themselves off. They hunker down, overtly or subliminally begin to blame each other for an inability to "make me happy". They attempt to distract themselves and go about their business to make the marriage “work,” but the fireworks is largely gone.

K. (silence)

E. And it occurred to me that, at this point, the marriage becomes a kind of soulless corporation, a “Family, Inc.” Even so, the two partners, if they remain together, often do their best to make "the corporation" profitable and efficient, for their children and even with outreach to community and church.

K. Some of these couples work hard to build “Family, Inc.” – but their hearts are far from the heaven-on-earth vision they'd bargained for.

E. No one ever started a business or a corporation on the basis of “not for a reason.”

K. 100% of the time it’s for “make me happy” in the business world. But no one has ever found the “extreme delight” and “the joy” out there in the corporate world. And there’s never been an unenlightened couple, a John and Mary, who’ve done any better.

E. In the “Course In Miracles” there’s a phrase, “the Divine Abstraction.” It means, when we put the ego away, God speaks to our spirits and places therein a “Divine Abstraction.” This is a generalized good feeling, an inspiration, a non-specifically directed mandate to love everyone.

K. This is very interesting! It’s “not for a reason”! We are to find agape love for everyone, not just those who "make me happy."

E. And, as I've come to see, this is how God loves us.

K. In other words, God doesn’t say to us, “make me happy” now by doing this long list of "100 things" I want for myself; instead, God loves us “not for a reason.”

E. And this is all well and good. But we should also clarify that the basis of marriage is not agape love. Agape love is the kind of love we are to display to everyone. And of course, two marriage mates will offer this kind of service-love to each other, but this is not why they come together. Dr. Joseph Campbell very well explained the differences among three major forms of love and why marital love is in a class all by itself. See the discussion on “The Wedding Song” prologue page.