Affairs of the heart
The heart chemical
When you’re in love, you produce a specific chemical in the region of the heart. This, I have found, is always mutual — the other person who’s in love with you produces the same chemical. I don’t know if it’s an organic chemical in your physical heart, or if it’s a spiritual chemical in your spiritual heart. It’s probably both.
If you’re not aware of this chemical, then you’re simply not aware of it, but you’re still producing it.
When you love a person but are not in love with them, you don’t produce that chemical.
Handfasting instead of marriage?
Look at the confounding divorce rate. People get married before they know each other properly. But when you’re in love, you need to commit. Waiting is not an option. Well, instead of getting married, why not try handfasting? Handfasting is a commitment. You commit to each other, ideally in a ceremony in front of witnesses, and you stipulate a length of time. It’s the same as being engaged, only stronger. It’s marriage without involving the law. At the end of your stipulated length of time your handfasting is over, and your next step will become … clear.
Love at first sight
I had a colleague who thought this doesn’t happen. But it does happen. I had this experience. It was mutual. Years earlier, a man walked into the room. We were both smitten. But it was clear to me from that first moment that we had already met — it must have been on the astral plane. I couldn’t remember that astral meeting, and I suppose he couldn’t either. But we had met. We knew one another already. So this first meeting — in that room on the physical plane — wasn’t the first time we had met. “Love at first sight” isn’t the right phrase. “Love at second sight” would say it better.
Celibacy?
You’re a sexual being in this life, and you’re going to be a sexual being in your next life. So be careful about making this “no” decision. Anything normal and healthy that you renounce in this life (no matter how noble your reason) can create a delinquency for your next life.
In some confessions, priests can marry. Imams and rabbis can marry. They can lead normal lives.
Some people choose to become a member of an order. They’ve chosen a life of prayer, service and celibacy. There would be nothing wrong with that if they had only one life.
In the future, would it be feasible for a monk or a nun to live in cloisters for a specific length of time? Perhaps for five years? After that, they are encouraged, indeed expected to leave and to return to normal life. Would this be feasible?
