If you talk to any couple who has been married over 20 years and gets along, the chances are they never went to see a marriage counselor. On the other hand if you talk to a couple that had just gotten a divorce chances are very good they had tried marriage counseling. I personally know of one couple who went to a marriage counselor and were successful. They went in the eighties and are still married and happy together. However, the marriage counselor they went to see was anything but orthodox. His approach was spiritual and not traditional western psychology.

My own experience as a mediator was western marriage counselors have a few things going against them. The biggest problem they have is they are not taught that man is a triune being. They believe man is limited to physical and psychological parts. They don’t recognize man is essentially spiritual. They also don’t recognize marriage is essentially a spiritual union and therefore spiritual laws are the most important for individuals to know.

I once asked two questions of a highly regarded (not by me) psychologist in San Diego. I asked her if she believed in God to which she replied, “God is an abstract thought.” The second question I asked her was if she believed in the law of karma (exemplified in the Judeo Christian doctrine as, “What you sow, so shall you reap”). She said, “Yes, it begins when you are five or six years old.” These two responses fly in the face of the spiritual reality that we are souls who have bodies and minds, and as souls we have been ‘somewhere’ before we were born, and we go somewhere after we die. In other words western psychologists only recognize the span of our life as reality. Because of this containment the concept of infinity has no place in our individual life. It’s the concept of an infinite soul that dictates a spiritual meaning to life. It’s the concept of infinity that gives love its deepest meaning. If there is no infinity all of our understandings of love become meaningless because our personal experience of love has no boundary. Is our experience of love a delusion? Is love something that actually comes and goes? Or is love the only reality that appears elusive because of psychological confusion?

Here are 5 questions you can ask yourself to test your own experience:

1. Am I happier when I give love or when I receive it?
2. Am I able to manufacture love or does it originate someplace else?
3. Can I trace my feelings of love back to their source?
4. Do I prefer feelings of love over other feelings?
5. Have I ever experienced a stronger feeling than love?

Love is proof of spirituality. It cannot be seen, heard or examined in a test tube. Yet we know no greater experience than that of love. Love has no boundaries other than those we impose upon it. When we affix our mind to love instead of what is fair we feel indescribable joy, the very nature of love, the very nature of god. We are meant to love our spouse with reckless abandon. If you learn how to do so you will have the happiest marriage in the world. Don’t forget to tell your best friend, the person you want to love with all of your heart, “I love you.”