We Can Only Change Ourselves

The most important thing to remember is that we cannot change our partner; we can only
change ourselves. No marriage succeeds without this understanding. In The Alchemy of
Happiness, Al Ghazzali, one of the great mystic writers of the Middle Ages, states, Man
has a lower nature, and, till he can control his own lower nature, he had better not assume the responsibility of controlling anothers.

Our resistance to change, however, is very strong. Im not the one who needs to change,
we mutter to ourselves.

There is a saying: When God goes, I am there; when I go, God is there. The I is the
ego, the base desires, the negative qualities, the arrogance which maintains that there are two waysthe wrong way and my way.

For real change to occur, we have to get back to some fundamental questions: Why am I
here in this world? What is the purpose for which I was born? What part does marriage
play in life here on earth?

Nothing changed in my own marriage until I had answered these questions. What I
discovered is that we are born to understand and experience our true nature so that we can progress, pass our exams and go on to our rightful place after death. This task can only be accomplished or worked on while we are here in this world. Our very existence on earth, the reason we are here, is to recognize and understand who we really are.

I discovered that the true self or soul is occluded by the minds desires. Much as a pure
metal can only be obtained by the smelting process, this physical world provides a large
furnace for clearing away the impurities of our being. If we can clear ourselves, we will
see our true nature and understand the reason for our birth and our struggle in this life.There are many different catalysts in our lives to facilitate this process, but by far the greatest of these is marriage. Marriage is the great furnace, the great purifier, the character builder.

As I mentioned earlier, I spent a year in a Zen Monastery in Japan and several more years
there pursuing a monastic, meditative existence, seeking spiritual knowledge. Even so, I
learned more about myself in my first year of marriage than in all that time. Why? No
institution or experience besides marriage provides a clearer mirror. In marriage, reflected back to us with startling clarity when we dare to look, we see ourselves: our ugliness, our defects, our good nature and our potential. We can fool anyone except the person to whom we are married. If we truly want to become better human beings or, better yet, enlightened human beings, marriage is a direct path, albeit a steep and difficult one.

Peace is something we have to earn. To earn it means going through and not around the
difficulty. It means dealing with ones egoones own way of doing things. Marriage is
difficult because it involves, on the outside, surrender to anothers will and, on the inside, surrender of our vanity and pride to tolerance. Marriage requires real work.