What's the spiritual purpose of romantic relationships?

[Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] one of the things when I was thinking about today that I thought was really that's very relevant that I wanted to talk about with with the four of you and of course with everybody else that's here is that in the context of the culture that we're endeavoring to give rise to the motivation the the actual motivation to get together uh in a uh in kind of a marriage contract which is more or less what this is all about it is not really for the usual reasons that most people uh most people do this so just to put it just to speak very generally so if this was a modern context you'd probably get you'd probably get together so you could have a family and make babies in a post-modern context you'd want to be able to get together so you could have sex in a way that was culturally sanctioned uh but the motivation would really be very uh is really very much for for you for the individual so in a in a context in which we're trying to give rise to new cultural potentials and to to new cultural values the the the the actual the highest motivation to do this is really not is not so you can get something out of this for yourself but so that you can actually make something possible for other people and the reason I'm saying that is because we are actually trying to give rise to new values that don't really exist yet in the culture at large and that are that are um there they are barely emergent yet and so it's basically through it's through our committed relationships with each other that our shared values become uh um tangible or obvious to the world around us right it's when we when we share higher values when we um when we articulate what those values are and then we when we put them in the context of our committed relationships with each other not just sexual relationships but all our relationships with each other then what those values are become objectified they become tangible they become easy for other people to see and relate to right so if we choose to come together in a in a committed sexual relationship in this particular context it's very important that we succeed so it's important that we succeed not for our own sake not merely just for our own personal satisfaction and confidence but I think it's even more important much more important INF in itely more important that we succeed for everybody else's sake which is a very different kind of motivation to come together with uh with another person it's a very high it's a very high motivation especially when you relate these very high motivations in relationship to what we could call lower impulses or not lower maybe gives it the wrong context uh but we can say that if we want but um but to want to come together in this context with the clear recognition that it's important that you guys succeed not simply for your own sake for your sense of your own self-confidence or your own pleasure or contentment but so that other people people that you don't even know would have confidence in in the goodness of life because of the fact that you that you're able to uh uh that you're able to express and project a kind of uh of happiness and confidence in your in in the bond that you have together that you know in in a in a cultural in you know in a shared cultural context where where these internal cultural structures are crumbling and are not strong and most people don't have much confidence in anything H in anything very deep anymore um people look to this particular area of life to see how people are doing and so we know we know we we know that this is an area especially in relationship to commitment that people have a lot of difficulty with now if you're only in if if you're only interested in a sexual relationship for yourself then it's very it's very hard to make this kind of thing last very long and that's why so many people have such a hard time with it um often through making babies you know people create they through simply making babies together people create a deeper a deeper source of commitment so they they they and by doing that they create a deeper resolve a moral resolve to uh to make things work because now they now they're responsible not just for uh for the initial commitment they made to to themselves but they're most now they're responsible for for other lives for the lives of their children so it that that that's one way that people can create a deeper sense of of commitment and moral obligation and maybe even spiritual obligation but if but if that's not going to be the if that's not the principal motive to come together to make babies then then there has to be then you have to look at this in a very different way so if we're coming together in this context to prove that something is possible that the the values that we're sharing in the context of this particular teaching uh that we want to be able to demonstrate their validity to uh to a doubting world then you begin to see that uh that your that your victory that the victory of your own Union becomes then a kind of a moral obligation and a spiritual obligation which completely recontextualizes what it means to be in a sexual relationship especially at this particular time in history in our particular culture so that's a very different way of thinking about what it means to be together so now you're not really coming together just so you can have a particular experience that would be you know culturally sanctioned or sanctioned in this case by the cultural that you have the particular cultural context that you've chosen to identify with but you're you're coming together to prove that something's actually possible and to embody a very uh High ideal so when you come together with someone else to do that the way you look at why you're together changes in the most dramatic way from the way most people think of why they're together because now you realize that you're together for a higher purpose to prove something to the world rather than to get something specific out of this for yourself and if we want to create a new cultural ideal and we want to give rise to we want to give people other people people that we know and people that we don't know you know a reason to have hope in what's possible then we need to be connected with the moral obligation the moral imperative that we need to succeed and that is where spiritual practice and commitment comes comes into this [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]