This verse uses "man" in a masculine sense, meaning thoughts and ideas in the intellect. Leaving father and mother means leaving the former state of internal spiritual awareness, and cleaving to his wife means being conjoined instead with the external awareness of life. Being one flesh means that the internal of the man and the external of the wife were together as one in life.

The people of the Most Ancient Church wanted to live from themselves. So the Lord created in them the capacity to feel that, though it meant they had to descend from the spiritual awareness they had enjoyed. But they weren't bad people; they still loved the Lord and wished to be good. They just wanted to feel that they were doing it themselves. By having the man cleave to the wife, the Lord allowed the people's higher internal states to enter into their external lives and be part of that sense of self, so they could indeed love the Lord as if from themselves.

(Odkazy: Arcana Coelestia 160, 161, 162)

2148. That 'he lifted up his eyes' means that He saw within Himself is clear from the meaning of 'lifting up the eyes'. By 'eyes' in the Word is meant interior sight, or the understanding, as becomes clear from the places quoted in 212, and therefore by 'lifting up the eyes' is meant seeing and perceiving the things which exist above oneself. Things that are interior are expressed in the Word by those that are higher, as in the expressions 'looking upwards', 'lifting up the eyes to heaven', and 'thinking high things' - the reason being that man imagines heaven to be on high, or up above himself, though in fact it is not on high but exists in things that are internal; when the heavenly things of love are present in a person, his heaven exists within him, see 450. From this it is plain that 'lifting up the eyes' means seeing within oneself.