In 1978 I failed at divorce and remarried my wife in a group wedding at Baba Muktananda’s ashram in South Fallsburg, NY. It was an Indian wedding with. 20 couples from around the world, and unlike my first wedding in the Baptist Church down the street from where we live now, I was very present for that wedding. And then in the 90s we became wedding photographers. Tune in to the talk for more surprises. I’ll tell you the whole story.

As I made this talk I realized that the Second Marriage was a metaphor for the Vow of Transcendence. The Vow cannot be broken even by the pain of death. This Vow is the Vow to be in alignment with Life itself. You can call this Life the Tao, The Force, God, Dharma, Spirit…whatever you want. But what you make this vow to is transcendent of all form, words, concept….It is a vow of the heart that manifests itself in form, in time, but it always point beyond to a greater whole, the ever transcendent Whole or Unity that you ARE….You see we are transcendent begins. Life transcends itself by dying into itself. Life is life dying into death and being reborn…not in time as separate acts but simultaneously.

THIS is what we don’t see in our material world of time. We separate death and dying by time. I live not but I die sometime in the future. I give not but I’ll receive in the future. No…giving and receiving, letting go and getting, form and emptiness are the ONE but the One is transcendent of the two that are separated by time. So the Second Marriage is a transcendent relationship to life itself that is a vow that cannot be broken, and so, since the vow is impervious to time and thinking, impervious to mind itself, the Vow holds…This is the Buddha Vow…to penetrate the Dharma Gate, to find the cause of my suffering and to bring it to and end. If I knew the cause of my suffering, through that know there is the cessation of suffering and my discontent with myself and the world. I and the world become One…but the One is transcendent of the many.

You see. The ONE is transcend of the many, the whole is transcendent of the parts and is greater than the parts. When. you are in a Second Marriage, a marriage to the Transcendent, the relationship is greater than the two part of the relationship. We all feel that in our bones. But the relationship is transcendent..the relationship is a calling to grow, and to grow is to transcend. The calling we feel in our hearts is the Call to Transcend. But the transcendent can never be attained and make into time, into form…because all form is being called to transcend….the home of form is in emptiness. The source of You is emptiness..is the formless which is the Transcendent call to go beyond who you think you are. This is the calling of the Heart to transcend Thought and the Thinker of thought.

The Transcendent is communicated through metaphor because metaphor points in opposite directions simultaneously. It point to form and it points to the transcendent that is formless. You have to make the leap; you have to put form and emptiness together like two palms of your hand.

When your two hands come together, one hand point to the form what this present moment, the other hand pointing to the Transcendent or Unity that is being created, there is a clash of thunder. The lightening flash of Awareness burns a gap in time, and when the two parted sides come crashing together it created the thunder of Awakening. BAM! This thunder is often expressed as a great fall on the floor laughter. All laughs are mini awakenings.