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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Soulmate, Myself:
The Perfect Mate

 Preface

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We can’t answer the question “What is the ‘perfect mate’?” until we come to terms with more basic concepts.

We must first determine the purpose of marriage before we can make any judgment concerning who is “perfect” or fitted to the task.

For example, the great historian Will Durant informs us that marriage began as a form of slavery. Tribal-patriarchs were allowed to corral as many pleasure-principle females as they could afford to stable - just ask Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon, and a host of others.

Marriage, for thousands of years, also served economic and political objectives. “I will marry you because then I can add your farm to mine”; or, “I will marry you," or "I will have my son marry you, to expand my kingdom and to cement a military alliance with your father.”

And so, if the focus of marriage is just negotiating a business deal, a “buying and selling, giving and receiving” -- as we saw in The Wedding Song – to purchase goods in the marketplace, be it pleasure, or capital improvement, or political chess-maneuvering, then the “perfect mate” will offer traits and advantages relative to these mundane concerns. See more discussion on the history of marriage in the "origins of the ten commandments" writing.

This is the way it was for marriage since the dawn of civilization – until the twelfth century when the Troubadours introduced something new. They were the first in history to impertinently suggest that marriage should have something to do with love and the development of the human spirit.

For a long time the “perfect mate” became a function of adding to one's domain of real estate and cattle, of “how many acres does your dad own?” But if the Troubadours were right, and marriage does have something to do with love and with the evolvement of the soul and the human spirit, then the “perfect mate” will mean something else.

She will be the one, the only one, who will draw from the depths of your hidden person all of the “made in the image” riches lying dormant. And this will be worth more than acquiring her dad’s farm.