A Christian mystic about human marriage?

Holger: What does Joel say about human marriage?

    

NotebookLM.google.com:

Joel Goldsmith teaches that human marriage, while often a pleasant human relationship, only becomes a permanent and harmonious bond when it is based on a spiritual rapport or rapport in God. Without this spiritual foundation, marriages are subject to the friction that arises when one person looks to another for fulfillment, health, or supply.

    

The Spiritual Bond vs. Human Dependency

• The Cause of Conflict: Goldsmith asserts that friction and conflict are inevitable the moment one partner wants or expects something from the other. A perfect relationship is one in which individuals do not look to anyone for anything, finding their completeness and sufficiency within their own realized oneness with God.
• Marriage “Made in Heaven”: He believes that when an individual makes “God-contact” their first priority, they will naturally draw to themselves a spouse who is also seeking the spiritual way of life. Such a marriage is “made in heaven” because God reveals the rightful companion.
• Supply and Equality: Goldsmith challenges the man-made custom that a wife must be dependent on her husband for supply. He teaches that God’s grace falls equally on both sexes and that each individual has direct access to the infinite source of supply. In a spiritual marriage, partners share with each other voluntarily from their own inner realization of God’s bounty.

    

Reinterpreting Marriage and Divorce

• The Reason for Divorce: The sources state that the primary reason for divorce is that partners see each other merely as “man and woman” rather than recognizing their true spiritual identity.
• Sacred Conception: Goldsmith argues that human birth should be reinterpreted not as an “animalistic” or carnal act, but as a sacred and secret process where parents wait for the “Christ to incarnate”. Parentage is a trust, and children should be viewed as individualizations of God.
• The Legal vs. Spiritual: He notes that human laws and ceremonies (“mumbo jumbo”) only make a marriage legal, not happy. True marriage is a spiritual relationship accompanied by love, which is an act of recognizing God as the identity of the other.

    

Practical Spiritual Application

• Meditating Together: He recommends that couples meditate together to resolve discords. He notes that in his experience, it is impossible to be unjust with a person with whom one has meditated, as it creates a bond that transcends sensuality and unites their interests.
• The Role of Spiritual Practitioners: A practitioner should never give human advice regarding whether a couple should marry, separate, or divorce. Instead, they should realize the oneness of God in the situation and let the Divine Presence adjust the relationship as it will, which may sometimes mean a peaceful separation to allow for individual fulfillment.

   

The “Mystical Marriage”

Goldsmith frequently uses marriage as a metaphor for the highest spiritual state, the “Mystical Marriage,” which is the conscious union of the soul with God. In this state, the human sense of “twoness” or separation is dissolved, and the individual realizes they are one with the Spirit within. While this is a spiritual experience, it can be translated into the language of human love and manifested as a higher, more harmonious experience of human companionship.

About Joel S. Goldsmith.