Marriage is a Carriage  

I met my German husband to be while traveling in India. I was not looking for a relationship. In fact, I had sworn off them for the time being, having recognised a pattern of seeking out men for a sense of security. I had sworn to not do that and was instead prioritising my self and my own path…

That realisation, in retrospect, was a premonition of what was to come and it created the perfect conditions for meeting someone!

 It wasn’t immediately evident that we were life partners, but so many signs were dropping from above that it became an undeniable shower of blessings. I arrived in the dusty town of Tiruvanamalai in Tamil Nadu as one woman and exited it as another. A week spent together in the penultimately mystical, life and death on the doorstep, edge of the seat of your existence, and also crazily romantic Varanasi, and it was clear – this will not be denied. In spite of all previous plans to the contrary. 

So I inserted a trip to Berlin into my travel plans with a combined subtle yet distinct sense that I was fooling myself to think I knew what I was doing, and at the same time a strong commitment to following my own soul, no matter what. That turned out to be a good combination for taking a leap into what I then thought of as the biggest adventure of all – marriage. 

This was how I could explain to myself what was happening as, pregnant after a couple of months of knowing each other, I contemplated the future. Still determined to do what I needed to do, the only way I could make marriage (especially to a German man who I’d known for a matter of weeks and whose child I was carrying) seem like a choice made with loyalty to my vision was to perceive it as the craziest adventure of all. So I took the leap. And it turned out to be true that it is the craziest adventure, filled with the potential for amazing highs and terrible lows. Challenging me to the limits of my capacity for love, making me grow, giving me untold gifts and many moments of sheer beauty and wonder. 

 There was a moment when, standing there in the kitchen in Berlin, looking into my partner’s eyes, having just found out that I was pregnant, I saw the whole future. I saw there was much we had to do and experience together. This moment of total knowing that I was graced to receive has given me a lot of faith over the years. 

 Now, 3 children and 18 years later, here we are. 

 There have been peaks and troughs, twists and turns.  We’ve been in my home town of Perth, Australia for 9 years.

I’m still not an expert. They do say it takes 20 (?) years to even start to get it right, which is reassuring and, also, soon! So I take to heart what Yogi Bhajan says about marriage – that it is a carriage to either heaven or hell. Two souls with the potential to become one light in two bodies. Two who serve each other to uplift and help each other grow and shine. It takes work and continuous effort. The ego is a rough and spiky thing and two egos of two people who ultimately have a deep trust in each other rubbing and bumping up against each other is going to either create a lot of damage .. or it’s going to wear those spiky bits down. 

It is grist yog – a mill for the ego, grinding it down. “Would you rather be right or happy?” is a phrase that is often needed. Or “rule in hell or serve in heaven”. Many’s the time that I’ve chosen to lay my ego’s burning desire to be right or understood in exactly this one way down in the name of peace. Many’s the time I’ve fought and defended the burning house too, though.

 It is indeed a fine dance of awareness. Marriage is a path of self-realisation for each individual in it, whether man/woman or woman/woman or man/man, as it is right to acknowledge that there is not only one version of this story. Our own personal needs and destiny unfolding requires individual action. We might also carry around some malfunctioning ideas about what a woman (or man) must give up in relationship in order to be the perfect wife/husband. It serves the soul and the destiny of the individual to give up ego clingings that keeps us limited and self-serving. But if there is a mistaken belief that suppressing our own soul impulses is required in marriage we will give up the wrong things. Resentment and disappointment will be the inevitable result. 

Also the teachings say 20% of your needs can be met in the material world, including in other people, and 80% in the spiritual ie. Your connection to the flow of your own spirit. Looking for more than that in your partner is a recipe for excessive attachment, possibly all the way to mutually oppressive symbiosis. Simultaneously, this could be used as a justification for withdrawal and a pretense of not needing anyone else. Both extremes lead to a break in the flow of the relationship. Finding the balance is an ongoing dance. 

Yogi Bhajan expresses a distinction of 3 styles of relationship: living at (fighting), with (co-existence) or for (serving each other’s highest potential). If each of the partners puts the service and upliftment of their partner as a priority, in a one pointed and selfless way, each is served. The relationship can grow in the positive. The two support each other to be the best they can be – which also means the kindest, the most compassionate, the most giving.

I do not sit here as a role model of marriage. I am working it out still. But I do know that in my soul and in my heart I know the truth of these teachings. They have not failed me in any area of my life yet and so I take the approach that whatever I don’t fully understand is an area where I still have work to do, rather than the teaching must be wrong. I have put my ego lower than the teachings and hence I have a path to tread.

 Marriage in a way is similar. I put my ego lower than the marriage. I recognise it is higher than me (my ego self). It is chosen by my soul. This man is chosen by my soul, honed in on by a miracle of soul driven sat nav-igation. Our relationship was from the very beginning dedicated to truth rather than a fake fantasy version of each other. We were both ready for that and both ready to be married to truth and the service of it. So we signed up for the sacrifice of ego, the renunciation of petty self-concern, in the name of something bigger. Our union was first sealed in Varanasi, where people go to die and be liberated! So it is that that I frequently remind myself of and it is that which helps me to approach my husband again and again as a bride of truth. I am married to that in him. And he is married to that in me. We are not married to each other’s egos.  

Through all the daily ins and outs of parenting, work, house, mortgage, dog, to remember this higher dedication and keep it breathing is the challenge and test of time and space. In Yogiji’s words, “Marriage is the institution which cannot get boring, because it is a continuous hassle against time and space. How can a thing become boring when you have to exert every minute of your life keep it going?”

That’s the grisht ashram, the householder’s life and the mill to make the ego into something fine, refined, useful and beautiful. Inevitably breaks happen in the relationship. Imbalances surface. Limiting beliefs from personal and family history block the doorway to love. But the commitment to open my heart, bring consciousness, to see my husband as if for the first time, to challenge and support each other’s potential is there still. This commitment is the mortar of the cozy home. 

On reflection of what I have learnt so far as I am just a short way into this lesson after 18 years, a big factor is understanding, accepting and agreeing to the differences between us. A huge key to success is working WITH rather than against these differences. Again, the teachings of Kundalini Yoga help greatly here, to identify where men and women generally differ in their thinking, processing, communication and overall being. Ceasing the effort to get your partner to be more like you is a great start towards peace and harmony! Small successes in communication create confidence and the motivation to learn more about how to communicate well. The best expression of these differences then is an increase in the tension in the polarity between you. That tension then, rather than being an underlying potential for conflict, becomes the energy needed to fuel the connection and the desire to come together in a creative coupling. On a basic level, it is sexual desire and the wish to couple and merge. This merging, when it is good, creates an energy that is far greater than the sum of its parts. Magic can happen. 

 I am grateful, profoundly grateful, to my husband and for the carriage of marriage, as a vehicle to become the woman I am consciously becoming. I do see it as a path of self-realisation, as I also see motherhood and service as a teacher. All this is too rich to comprehend. It is a far greater syllabus than my mind can capture at this point, so I will have to leave it here for now. I take solace in the knowing that I am in good company in finding it hard sometimes! That happens to the best of us. But is it not good to know that there is still so much to learn? The best is yet to come.

And now I must go and text my husband at work as I have the pressing urge to thank him and say something lovely to him.