Marriage: conscious contract

I might be paraphrasing Eckhart Tolle when I say that when we think relationships are meant to make us happy we are heading for unhappiness; when we realise that relationships are meant to make us conscious… then we can work with relationship as a spiritual practice and, conversely, this brings us happiness.

I had a fascinating conversation this week with a dear friend who is about to embark on a conversion from civil partnership to marriage and we were exploring the difference between the two when my friend quite rightly points out… he gave himself 100% the first time around.

Initially the conversation rambled around civil rights and equality but we discerned them in the end to be red herrings. The institution of marriage has its roots in religion and politics and quite frankly boils down to a legal contract which is either blessed by God and your community… or not, as the case may be.

The image that comes to my mind is of the holy wells that are dotted all over Britain. I live in an area that is incredibly rich with them. Many of them now have churches next to them, walls around them, names of saints…

But those wells were there - and they were sacred - before the church came along.

This is how I feel about marriage and indeed about the contract too. That two souls should be destined to meet and to assist each other in coming to consciousness is a contract made outside of time and space. The contract is within and is either conscious or unconscious.

I believe the institution of marriage has been built on these sacred contracts like churches have been built on sacred wells - to such an extent that the well is often now completely forgotten and the edifice of the institution attempted to be replicated in secular law.

Strip it back, strip it back, strip it back!!! Before human laws governed love, before the church governed love… take down the FORM of what marriage has come to be seen as - allow it's dust to blow away…

There is the well. That contract between 2 souls - maybe to love, maybe to be happy… probably to push buttons, wind up and generally agitate too… a common destiny towards healing and wholeness.

When, in preparation for marriage, in spiritual counselling, we are able to strip it all back to the soul contract then we have the basis of the married life… a conscious journey together, the threshold for which is the wedding ceremony.

So the outer form of a contract is not an imposition but rather the inner contract being made conscious… to be blessed and celebrated.