Living Together
This statement announced a Barry Long teaching day in Sydney on 17 December 1987, about the truth of relationships and how to get it right with the people you live with.
Living together as man and woman inevitably degenerates into familiarity. Familiarity breeds the family consciousness. The family consciousness stirs the need for a child (or a new house or car) to make up for the love that is slipping away. An exciting new triangular way of loving each other through the child (the old eternal triangle) is discovered and works - for a while. The family consciousness deepens and along with it the interference of parents. The parents seldom make love - and even more seldom for the love of it. The child, having been used as a third party to keep the peace, to keep the family consciousness together, becomes emotionally rebellious and difficult. One partner takes a lover. The other is astonished and bitterly disillusioned at having to face the truth they have evaded. The lovers live together … And the family cycle starts again.
Getting Over Understanding