Enchanted Love

by Marianne Williamson

  What I used to think—what lots of women I know used to think—is that I had more important things to do than love a man. To me, surrender to a man meant that I would have to give up myself so he could shine. I know there are men in relationships with whom that would indeed be true, but their numbers are diminishing. There’s a whole new world now, with new possibilities for union and equality.

  Everyone, whether men, women, or children, as individuals or collectively, follow cycles of growth and rhythms of becoming. Whether a phase represents physical growth, as in a child’s body, or the awareness of an entire species, there is an evolutionary imperative to keep moving in the direction of a higher good.

  The times we live in are like a planetary puberty, with hormones and chaos and longing leaking out all over. “I’m not who I used to be, but who am I then?” is practically painted in red over every event. And every unit of human identity—every one among us—is struggling to find the answer.

  Women have been struggling to emerge like butterflies from the cocoon into which we were forced for the last few thousand years. The journey of our self-actualization—of our rising from the ashes of past physical, mental, and emotional oppression—is clearly one of the major dramas of modern Western civilization. The emergence of true feminine power and glory, while not easy and perhaps rarely accomplished in full, is at least a conscious effort on the part of millions of women.

  But starving people have a hard time sharing food. When we ourselves are needy, the needs of others will always come last. So perhaps it’s not an accident that women, having been starved for so long and now finally experiencing how it feels to be at least partially fed, are beginning to notice the emotionally starving men all around us. They are starving, among other things, for our attention and approval. Isis didn’t say to Osiris, “Just stay down there! I don’t care.” Men, like women, have the need to be called forth.

  It’s understandable that women’s adoration was withheld from our men for a while; we had thousands of years of bottled-up rage to express, and it didn’t exactly put us in a demure mood while we were going through that. Yet now, there is a new coming together between the sexes, as we find ourselves at a higher level of mutual honor and need. “I can’t go any further without you,” is at first a feeling we are afraid to admit, but then we exult in saying it once we know we’re in a place where it’s safe to do so. At a certain point, a woman can’t conceive new life, whether her own or her child’s, without a man’s input, and neither can he reproduce without us. Nature has ordained our utter interdependence, which is not, when seen through enchanted eyes, our damnation but our salvation.

  If you say to a man, “I need you,” and his eyes look panicked, then definitely he’s not the man you belong with. But if you say to a man, “I need you,” and his eyes look amused, because he knows that you know you don’t really need him, but still he’s totally turned on that you would say it because he knows the level on which you do mean it, then I would suggest you take your shoes off and plan to stay a while.

  Dear God,

  Please protect and nourish

  my beloved.

  Surround him with Your power and grace.

  Make clear the road that You would have him walk,

  easy the goals You accomplish in his life,

  and soft the pillow he rests on.

  Use me to provide for him

  an ever more wonderful life.

  Amen

  I can see how it’s been very hard for men for the last thirty years or so. “No, I don’t need you to open the car door for me.” (Read: “You jerk.”) “No, you are not invited to fix me, you will not be allowed to dominate me, and you better not dare put your feet on either my emotional or my material furniture.” (Read: “In fact, I’ll cut off your you-know-whats if you try.”) “No, I do not appreciate your efforts to make things better, because I’m sure it’s just another of your patriarchal, domineering, chauvinistic plans masquerading as a solution.” (Read: “You realize, of course, that I hate your entire sex.”)

  And many of these poor guys got it. They themselves could see the destructiveness of the brutish, shadow side of the male personality, as much as we could—and they wanted to not be that, as much as we wanted to not be around it. Even this shows a desire to please us, at least subconsciously. Ironically, what then developed in them was the same syndrome with which women have been cursed for centuries: “I’ll hide who I really am, so you’ll like me.” And of course, it didn’t work. After we ripped their balls off, we started yelling at them contemptuously, “Why aren’t you a man!?!?”

  Many men drew inward, shrinking from their own masculinity out of fear that it might harm someone. In the name of gentleness, but often stemming more from fear than from genuine tenderness, they shrank from their own male greatness. There are few dangers greater than the danger of an unrecognized belief, and the unrecognized belief that masculinity is somehow corrupt, in and of itself, has crippled both men and women for decades.

  Some of the best men among us, the souls most equipped to usher in the romance and spirituality of the era now dawning, often acquiesced to the prejudice against powerful males. They withdrew from what they saw as the rat race, as appalled as we were at the violence and greed of white male power in America. As usual, the judgment was a slash to the heart of both judger and judged. Slowly, silently, and often unconsciously, these men began to mourn the loss of their own vigor and male assertiveness, painfully conflicted about their valid desire and aptitude for material manifestation. They could not obliterate their desire to go, to do, to build empires, to exert power in the world, yet held that desire deep within them like a guilty secret. Having been made to feel wrong, in essence, for the worldly expression of their own masculinity, they attitudinally crouched in a corner, secretly jealous of lesser men.

  Often, they don’t want to admit it, but they wish that they had made more money. They don’t want to admit it, but they wish now that they did have a worldly empire. They don’t want to admit it, but they feel embarrassed that they don’t have the means to do certain things in the material world. All this can be corrected, of course, as soon as they recognize where they judged a certain trait, thus suppressing their own power to personify it. Forgiveness is the key to healing absolutely everything. What we judge in others, we deny ourselves. What we are willing to bless in others, we will allow ourselves. Judging a trait, even suppressing it, does not transform it. Allowing an energy to emerge, and asking that it be blessed by God and used for His/Her purposes, is the only way to lift it higher.

  Not all men who make a lot of money do evil, brutish, domineering things with it—not by a long shot. Not all men who build worldly empires then use their empires to suppress and exploit and manipulate others—not by a long shot. And not all men of worldly means are spiritual morons—not by a long shot.

  It’s worth mentioning, as well, that not all people who are struggling to survive are so holy and pure. The myth that money is the root of all evil was invented by the master, not the slave, and for the purposes of further enslavement. It is a thought that is sure to quiet the disempowered masses, but at a time like this, when empowerment is the buzz, that thought is being dropped from our minds like chains being thrown off long-bound shoulders. The attachment to money is a danger, as the attachment to anything is a danger. But money, like anything else, can be used in the service of furthering the good. And a lot of what would help the world most, right now, would be well served by an influx of cash.

  Money is just a symbol, of course, for a certain kind of worldly power. But particularly for men, it is an important symbol, for it represents the power to wield a certain kind of authority in our society. To pretend otherwise is immature. This is not a negative authority, by the way, but a neutral authority. All of us should feel authorized to create. We don’t want a world where everyone feels equally disempowered; we want a world where everyone can feel equally empowered to manifest the power of good.

&n
bsp; Making men wrong for the worldly expression of their masculine self, in any form, is like making men wrong for an erection. Fine if you want to do that, but don’t expect any more babies, or new life, if you do.

  The story of Isis and Osiris reveals that the feminine does not just give birth to new life: it restores life where it is broken. Love is a feminine force, not just in women but in men as well, creating not out of “doing” but out of “being”—being loved, being appreciated, being honored, being wanted, being cherished, being respected, and being received at the deepest levels of our souls. That is why the deeper the state of our own emotional and spiritual being, the more of a psychic womb we are for the conception and gestation of an enchanted love.

  For the last few decades, many men have supported our journey of mystical feminism, helping give birth to our more liberated identities as their mothers had given birth to them. Upon physical birth, we lie in our mother’s arms. Upon spiritual rebirth, the divine mother reaches through the lover to hold us once again.

  And now, a new twist in the storyline of our cosmic rebirth is developing, as the souls of so many men among us are silently saying, “I helped birth you. Now please, birth me. Tell me it’s okay to be a man, the way I once told you it’s okay to be a woman. If you want to know what my dream is, my dream is to be me. Hold a space for who I am, and I will hold a space for who you are. Otherwise, I will never know myself. And until I know myself, I cannot know you.”

  To know each other is the only reason we’re here. To truly know each other is to love each other, and to love each other is to know and love God. To know and love God is to co-create with Him, a world on earth as it is in heaven. Hallelujah, we will be naked and unembarrassed. Hallelujah, we will play in the garden. Hallelujah, we will all be free.

  So rest in me, and I will rest in you. The rest is in the hands of God. . . .

  Dear God,

  Please remove from me

  my resistances to love.

  Make straight my path

  to the heart of my beloved.

  Reveal to me the meaning

  of this ride that we are on.

  Amen

  5

  Love and Fire

  You know what I see in you? Not only the weakened, but also the strong. Not only the wounded, but also the healed. Not only the old, but also the new. Enter with me into a dazzling present, to be with me, now, who we have never allowed ourselves to be before.

  New water pours over us, as we surrender to the wave. We will wash ourselves clean of the yesterdays that stick to us. This is not death. We are not drowning.

  Forget with me, my darling. Forget with me what never was.

  A FRIEND OF MINE e-mailed me to say he was in love. This was it. This was the real one, the maddeningly rapturous, complete and total experience of love he’d been waiting for his entire life.

  Several months later, I was speaking to him and asked him how his love affair was doing.

  “I’m still in there,” he said. “But it’s hard. It’s bringing up all my issues.”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “Like tolerance. Anger. Enmeshment. Judgment. My mother.”

  “Wow,” I said. “That certainly sounds like a lot of fun.”

  “I have gotten totally in touch with how I responded to my mother’s attempted suicide when I was four years old,” he said. “I decided back then that I would take care of her, no matter what, so she wouldn’t leave me. And now, when someone abandons me or doesn’t act the way I think they should, I just die. I used to attack people when they did that, because I would go into denial over it and pretend it wasn’t happening, but now I know I need to get in touch with my feelings no matter what, but even when I get in touch with the feelings, then I have to not attack or judge because otherwise I’ll just turn the other person off and then they’ll leave me all over again and that’s my mother.”

  “How fun!” I said. “And your girlfriend? What is she like?”

  “She’s intense. She’s powerful. She’s angry. She’s selfish. She’s narcissistic. But she’s really doing the work. I have never seen anybody do the work the way she’s doing. She’s looking deep into issues that I’m only just beginning to question. It’s amazing. All of her incest and abandonment issues are right in her face. She’s in therapy and looking at these things, and I understand it makes her totally self-absorbed to be dealing so deep with those issues right now, but I get jealous because I want more of her attention and then that brings up all my abandonment issues. We fight on an average of once a week. She doesn’t take any of my shit. But it’s tiring after a while. I really don’t know how long this ride is gonna last.”

  “So! . . .” I exclaimed, exhausted from merely hearing the story. “Have you seen any good movies lately?”

  Hearing my friend tell the story of his love affair, I had my own thoughts about what issues were being brought to the fore. To me, they were in some ways different from his. I don’t minimize the need for psychological work, but as necessary as it can be, purely analytical understanding is not the ultimate meaning of intimacy. In fact, I think we should avoid the temptation to pathologize relationships so much. It can tempt us to insidiously avoid the real experience of love.

  At the heart of love lies an irreducible mystery. To demystify love is to lose it. Its mystery provides its vital power to enchant us, to touch us, and to heal us. In far too many relationships, the mystery is squeezed out of love. Plans, form, analysis, definition—they can all be used to block love’s spiritual outpour. Mystery is fragile and demands our protection. We must surrender ourselves to a higher drama if we would drink of the divine.

  Beyond the mortal mind is the realm of immortal spirit, with a different story to tell from the hysterical drama that we call life. I heard a different story from the one my friend was relaying, as he told me of his relationship. It was the story of a generation with a desperate need to apply spiritual principles to our romantic pursuits. Truths such as forgiveness; learning to live in the moment; knowing that we right the wrongs of the past through right, compassionate living in the present; respecting the mystery that brings us together; listening to the wisdom of the heart; not hiding behind psychological analysis; seeking God’s grace; creating emotional safety for ourselves and for each other; avoiding the temptation to judge and find fault; cradling the broken other in our arms; and pouring on support and approval, in an effort to bless and heal us both.

  I warn you: this will not be easy. I warn you: this will take some work. I warn you: love will burn you up. Are you ready to be burned, or would you rather just grow old?

  Jean-Paul Sartre once wrote, “Hell is other people.”

  And so is heaven.

  Relationships can be hell. Someone isn’t getting enough time or attention, someone else isn’t getting enough freedom or space. Someone’s controlling; someone else is withholding. Someone’s crying and trying to get in; someone else is sighing and trying to get out. Over and over, we are emotionally bombarded. Often we wonder, “Why do I bother?”

  Yet every once in a while, there is a burst of starlight: a minute, an hour, perhaps a day or year or even much longer, when love is perfect. We are truly seen by someone and that someone loves what he or she sees. The very air becomes a moving sidewalk as we stride from one right moment to another, completing each other’s sentences, holding each other’s dreams. Our very molecules seem to know each other. In that one moment, or on that one day, we finally feel not alone on this earth after all.

  But then reality sets in, or actually, nonreality sets in. Love is the ultimate, God-created, unchangeable reality in the universe, but the world we have made for ourselves does not acknowledge or reflect that. With our free will, we have established an alien mental kingdom ruled not by love but by thoughts of fear. Love does not feel at home in the world of fear, and that is because it is not. Lasting love can be very hard to achieve on this plane, running as it does so counter to the grain of the emotional
status quo. The ways of love can feel almost unnatural. We have manufactured for ourselves, in this illusionary world, a kind of ersatz love. It is based more on tolerance than on real acceptance, more on form than on content, and more on the joining of bodies than on the joining of spirits. And as long we keep things shallow, as long as there is no run for the mountaintop experience of love, then these relationships have a fairly good chance of surviving.

  But if you dare to say, “No, I want more,” then you are confronting the ego and demanding the joy that is your natural birthright as a child of God. If you have the courage to stand up and consciously declare that the limits to love in this world do not work for you, that you choose to experience the lifting of the veil while you are still alive, then you have taken on the forces of fear.

  And fear will answer you. “Fine,” it will say. “Love deeply, if you want to. See if I care. But watch that wall of fire in front of you, and on your left and on your right. It will consume you, of course. But by all means, go ahead and try to walk right through.”

  That fire does consume, but grace bestows upon us a titanium personality structure invincible enough to withstand the heat. Two souls genuinely combining spiritual forces generate—quite literally—the power of God. That power is reflected in the material world. Both nuclear fusion and nuclear fission are physical reflections of the extraordinary potential for both destructiveness and creativity, when two units of life either separate or merge. Relationships can be powerfully bad, and they can be powerfully good, but they cannot be powerless.

  Love can be a huge mountain, a gentle garden, a raging storm, a cool breeze, or a perfect bath. But there is always fire somewhere nearby. There is always the red-hot stuff of the soul’s initiation. If there isn’t fire, then it isn’t love. It might be a marriage that lasts forever. It might have all the signs of what the world calls a “successful relationship.” But if it doesn’t insist that you move to your next level, if it doesn’t take your heart and make it explode in a million pieces, only to fall back together again in some moment of enlightened understanding, then you haven’t really loved. You’ve done the bourgeois thing perhaps, but let’s not call that love.