The Young Girl/Blind Man's Ignorance of The Monster

 

We don’t understand that it’s time for us to withdraw our projection and actually relate to The Other Person.

True Marriage can only be based on Human Love, which is different from romantic love, being in love, or in-loveness. 

Don’t Mix Levels 

When Gold is being exchanged, there are two rules that can save both parties trouble. 

First, when you put your gold onto someone, you have no right to pester that person. 

To project Meaning and Importance onto another person is enough.

You don’t want to smother him. 

Second, don’t mix levels. Alchemical gold is an element in its own right and shouldn’t be mixed with anything else. 

Friendship, companionship, sex, fun, work—all these relationships can be good, but it creates a mess when you express the alchemical gold through them. 

You may end up marrying the person who carries your gold. 

That’s legitimate. 

But don’t mix the gold with the many other facets of relationship that are possible. 

“Blessed are the pure in heart.” 

Pure means unmixed. 

On what level is it True? On what level is the Virgin birth True? 

Almost all psychological suffering is caused by mixing levels. 

Everything in you is good in its own right, a construct of God. 

But contamination of one thing by another can short-circuit both. 

Much of my time as a therapist was spent making an effort to get patients to state as simply as possible the elements of their problem. 

As soon as the issues are understood clearly, it’s usually clear what to do. 

When you are struck, when gold is being exchanged, sit quietly until the smoke clears and you see where you are. 

If you can talk this out with the person holding your gold — with all the dignity and intelligence you can muster — it’s a beautiful way of affirming what is going on. It may be risky, but it is well worth the effort. 

Love and Marriage 

Sometimes, when you put your gold onto another person, he also puts his Gold onto you. 

It gets complicated when the exchange of gold goes both ways. 

One of the contaminations of levels that we make— we’re scarcely able to think otherwise—is that the exchange of gold means marriage.

Marriage is Good, and Gold is Good. 

They may go together nicely. 

But they’re not synonymous. 

It can be a problem when we mix these things up. 

We think, "I’ve fallen in love, I must take her to bed." 

Maybe you will, but that’s not synonymous with falling in love. 

In our culture, mutual projection is regarded as the prerequisite for marriage. 

We take for granted that we will marry the person we are in love with. 

But being in love is not enough to guarantee a successful marriage. 

When you fall in love, you feel overwhelmed with excitement. 

You’ve projected your gold, your deepest inner value, onto the other person. 

You’ve given it to her to incubate for a while, until you are ready to take it back. 

And if the feeling is mutual, she has given her gold to you. 

For the relationship to succeed, somewhere along the way each of you has to take your gold back. 

Unfortunately, that’s usually accompanied by disillusionment. 

“You’re not the knight I thought you were.” 

“You’re not a princess when you wake up in the morning.” 

The gold comes clattering down by way of disappointment. 

If we could only understand that we put our gold in someone’s lap for a period of time—until we get stronger—and someday it will come to an end. 

We aren’t wise in this respect, and it’s one of the most painful issues in our culture. 

Five years later, when the relationship isn’t working, we don’t understand that it’s time for us to withdraw our projection and actually relate to the other person —our partner, our spouse. 

True marriage can only be based on human love, which is different from romantic love, being in love, or in-loveness. 

Romanticism is unique to the West, and is a relatively new occurrence, only since the twelfth century. 

Romantic love is not a basis for marriage. 

Our human life, our marriage, is fed by the capacity to love human to human. 

When we’re in love, we put our gold—our expectations—on the other person, and this obliterates her. There is no relatedness.

Loving is a Human Faculty. 

We love someone for who that person is. 

We appreciate and feel a kinship and a closeness. 

Romantic love, on the other hand, is a kind of divine love. 

We deify the other person. 

We ask that person, without knowing it, to be the Incarnation of God for us. 

Being in love is a deep religious experience, for many people the only religious experience they’ll ever have, the last chance God has to catch them.