Leslie Temple-Thurston - The Marriage of Spirit: Enlightened Living in Todays World

Leslie Temple-Thurston grew up in South Africa at the height of the oppressive regime of Apartheid. She experienced firsthand the extreme polarizations in human consciousness that can divide people and that can drive them to the most inhumane policies and conduct. It created in her a desire to discover and to help heal the root cause of such divisions.

Her search became a life-long spiritual quest that combined long periods of meditation and spiritual discipline with the study of ancient wisdom teachings, as well as modern psychological thought. What she discovered, as have other teachers before her, is that these divisions are based on the polarizing structure of the human psyche.

We must first experience unity consciousness if we hope to heal the many divisions that separate us as people, if we hope to live in inner and outer peace in the world and if we hope to truly learn how to love. In 1988, Temple-Thurston gave her first seminar, which encompassed a set of principles and processing techniques based on the ancient mystical teachings of the unification of opposites.

The techniques of The Marriage of Spirit are filtered through modern psychological thought and emerge in an original form designed for the busy western lifestyle. They are a simple and very fast way to recreate balance and harmony in our ordinary, everyday living. They help us to bridge spirituality and the material world and bring us into greater levels of love, compassion and empowerment.

These techniques dont just rearrange the ego but help transform and clear it so that we can live a truer expression of our own inherent divine nature. In a world torn apart by polarization, they offer hope for a third way, that of unity amidst diversity.

T HE
M ARRIAGE
OF
S PIRIT

Enlightened Living in Todays World

LESLIE TEMPLE-THURSTON

with Brad Laughlin

CoreLight Publishing
Santa Fe, New Mexico

The Marriage of Spirit

Enlightened Living in Todays World

Second Edition

Copyright 2012, 2003, 2000 by CoreLight Publishing. CoreLight makes available downloadable audio and written materials either for free or for a fee, and grants you unlimited downloads to your computer and/or your personal listening device for your personal use.

All downloadable material is copyrighted by Leslie Temple-Thurston, Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA. All rights reserved. You may use or reproduce as long as the text is unaltered and appropriately credited.

For information:

CoreLight Publishing

223 North Guadalupe Street, # 275

Santa Fe, NM 87501-1850 U.S.A.

(505) 424-8844

www.corelight.org

www.marriageofspirit.com

Cover design: Christinea Johnson

Cover photograph: Brad Laughlin, Old Jerusalem, 1998

Book design & typography: Kathleen Sparkes,

White Hart Design, Albuquerque

Editors: Diana C. Douglas, John Lyons-Gould,

& Brad Laughlin

Proofreader & Indexer: Kate Willis

Publisherss Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Temple-Thurston, Leslie.
The marriage of spirit: enlightened living in todays world /
Leslie Temple-Thuston with Brad Laughlin.
p.cm.
eISBN: 978-1-931679-10-7
1. Spiritual life. 2. Self-actualization (Psychology)
3. Spiritual journalsAuthorship.
I. Laughlin, Brad. II. Title.

BL624.T46 2000
291.44
I00-426

The illustrations opening each chapter are yantras by artist James Emery. Yantras are ancient mystical symbols for transforming consciousness in gazing meditation.

This book is dedicated to the divine essence at the core of each one of us.

A lthough neither of my two former teachers, Frances Stearns and Frederick Lenz, would have wanted to feel bound by a formal lineage, each has seeded me with different aspects of the information birthing into fruition with this book. The Marriage of Spirit is a synthesis of what they both impressed upon the soft clay of my awareness.

They each expressed their devotion to the perennial philosophy and to humanity in different ways, and it was left to me to meld their different viewpoints of truth into the one, coherent form that was my destiny to find. They validated the truth that was trying to birth in me, gave me a vocabulary, a sense of structure and much more. What they asked of me in no way equaled what they each gave. I thank and bless you both.

To my inner guides, the many masters who were midwives to truthI bless you and thank youwe live together eternally, as One.

To birth the Marriage of Spirit and to teach it with my own voice has taken more than three decades, yet it is something I feel sure all my teachers wanted. I have no words for the depth of gratitude that I feel toward them all.

Nothing happens in a vacuum, and the making of this book is no exception. So many wonderful individuals contributed their expertise. Brad Laughlin, my dear friend and partner in writing the book, whose voice stands alongside my ownthank you for your unshakable support, selflessness and endless endurance. I love you and bless you. My love and deepest gratitude to my children, who can take much of the credit for motivating me and who constantly impacted me with Generation-X viewpoints. Also my love and gratitude to the CoreLight staff who work faithfully as a team to hold the work of spreading the dharma and who helped move the book project forward in so many important ways.

The editors for The Marriage of Spirit, Diana C. Douglas, John Lyons-Gould and Brad Laughlin, deserve special praise. Editing what I gave them was not an easy task and they all rose to the occasion.

To all the others who helped in the many phases of the book productiondesigning; illustrating, critiquing; reading; proofing; researching; writing testimonials; donating time, energy and moneyespecially James Emery, Cyndi Laughlin, Christine Arundell, Linda Garcia, Tanya Sydney, Christinea Johnson, Kathy Sparkes, Holli Duggan, Judith Baker Miller, Raymond Diaz and Celeste Magerswe could not have done without youthank you.

To all the blessed souls who have shared darshan and Marriage of Spirit classes with me, lending their own unique processes to the birthing of this materialthank you for being the final inspiration for this book

My love and blessings to you. You are all amazing grace.

For the sake of readability, God, the Self and the Divine are the only names capitalized throughout the book, but many others are referenced throughout the book interchangeably. Out of respect for the varied traditions that are seeking to describe the same indescribable fact, we have listed them here, capitalized.