Enchanted Love

by Marianne Williamson

  I had been asking God to free me of my attachment to this man, but I began to realize that God couldn’t free me of what I wouldn’t let go. As my friend Mary Manin Morrissey says, “God can only do for us what He can do through us.” God gives us His strength by giving us His vision of things. Our seeing people as innocent is the only way to achieve God’s peace.

  As long as I was holding onto the thought, “If he loves me, he’ll call,” then I was insidiously judging him if he did not, and thus I was vulnerable to pain. To say I forgave him for not calling meant nothing as long as I was judging him for not calling in the first place! A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love, and I made that shift, saying, “I have my experience of the connection between us. That connection is impervious to whether or not he ever gets back to me on the physical plane.” I owned what was mine to own, I enjoyed what was mine to enjoy, and by the time he called, I was light as air.

  Dear God,

  Please remove from me

  my temptation to try to control another person.

  I surrender this relationship

  into the hands of divine spirit.

  May it be blessed,

  may it be sweet,

  may it be free of my unforgiveness.

  Amen

  So deep relationships are messy, they are uncomfortable, they are work; we are forced to confront those places in ourselves where we can’t always practice yet what we know enough to preach. A safe lover is someone who understands that we’re trying, and doesn’t punish us for falling short. A dangerous lover is one who either knowingly puts his or her foot in your way so you’re bound to trip over it, or tells you what a klutz you are when you trip over that foot or someone else’s. Those people are not partners in an enchanted journey; they’re our partners in hell. We’re absolutely right to walk away from those situations; they do not serve. The fact that we forgive someone does not mean that we can never leave that person. If anything, we can leave more easily the situations where we know in our hearts it is best to leave. To travel with God is to travel lightly.

  Low-level, neurotic relationship dramas do not support our own, or the planet’s, movement in the direction of God. Their prevailing characteristic is the way they always circle back upon themselves; the pain of the relationship never seems to get ultimately resolved. In that case, although one can certainly understand why Spirit would have led you to reveal each other’s deepest wounds, it doesn’t appear as though, at this point anyway, one or both people are ready to turn a wound into a sacred wound and make the relationship a holy environment. In those relationships, there is more judgment than forgiveness, more attack than sharing, more defensiveness than taking of personal responsibility. Hanging around for an endless repetition of the same cycle is not loving, but merely dysfunctional.

  A woman once told me she was upset because her boyfriend had failed to acknowledge her birthday. My question to her was this: “Did he forget your birthday, or did he ignore your birthday?” If he just forgot it, then there are a million ways that an apology and a little effort on his part could make the pain go away. But if he ignored her birthday, even passively, as though to let her know that no expectations of any kind would be tolerated here, then he is not just forgetful, he is unkind. And kindness should be a minimum standard.

  God offers us, in our relationships, the perfect opportunities for maximal learning, but whether or not we choose to take advantage of those opportunities is completely up to us. A holy relationship is one in which both people understand the cosmic game that’s being played here: “Hi, my weaknesses see your weaknesses. Want to dance and grow strong together?” If there is not that conscious context, that sacred environment for the issues which emerge, then unconsciousness—and ultimately pain—will dominate our interactions with the one we love. Then, no matter how romantic it had been, how great the sex or how lovely the smiles, it will all go down in burning flames and we will not be transformed. We will merely be burned.

  It’s helpful, when we’re trying to forgive, to remember that she’s known as much pain as you have known, he’s as scared as you are, and no one here is perfect. Both people knowing that, in a conscious moment of shared compassion, doesn’t mean our boundaries are leaky, but only that our hearts are open. We can turn this deeper acceptance of each other into a disciplined compassion. Until we do that, we will always be tempted to attack, and whenever we attack another, we are actually attacking ourselves. I remember saying to someone once, “To attack me is to attack us.”

  There is, inside all our heads, the ego’s rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships.

  No one brings out the attack dog faster than the person we have chosen to love. You remind me of one of my parents; therefore, psychically, I must kill you off. You remind me of someone else who loved me, but then they humiliated me; therefore, psychically, I must kill you off. You will probably laugh at me once you really know me; therefore, psychically, I must kill you off.

  What an angry generation we have been. What walls we built around the moat we dug around the fortress we constructed around our wounded hearts. And even when our prayers were answered and some sweet prince made his way past the wall, beyond the moat, through the fortress, and almost into our hearts, we sent whatever sentries necessary to shoot an arrow right into him and stop him short of his intended goal. Our slogan in love became, “Man the walls!”

  But there’s a mass exodus now, from behind the castle walls. Rapunzel’s prince did fall from the tower and go blind, Rapunzel did lose her long hair and spend years in exile, but ultimately they refound each other. Her tears on his eyes gave him back his sight, and they lived happily ever after, after all. That’s the part of the story we can witness to now, that our tears might turn into balms with which we heal each other and comfort each other, after so many years of getting it all so wrong.

  Think what it must have felt like, their coming together after having been apart for so long. Think what it must have felt like, his eyes miraculously regaining their sight. Think what it must have felt like, her realizing she could have him even without her hair to draw him in.

  Think what it must have felt like, because that is how it will feel for you.

  Okay, so I have a gift for you. It is a necklace of flowers. One is the flower of forgiveness, two is the flower of my understanding, and three is the flower of my challenge to you.

  What challenge, you ask? To show yourself to me. But will you still want me then? Oh yes I will, and I will love you even more.

  Try this: Agree, as a couple, to write each other a letter. In the letters, reveal your deepest personal fears, about your life and about your relationship. Write the letters sitting next to each other, perhaps, or at least at the same general time. When you exchange the letters, agree not to read them. The ritual is to say, “I am willing to hold your fears, to be a space for the miracle which obliterates them. But I will not go too far, I will not put my fingers on an open wound, I will not look at what you are not ready for me to see, or hear what you would prefer I not know.” And then the risk: Agree to put the letter from your beloved somewhere important and sacred, yet leave it unread. Perhaps create an altar just for your love, a clean and beautiful place in your home where you dedicate thoughts and things to the furtherance of the sacred bond between you.

  And then, one night or one morning, when the growing intimacy between you is making each of you feel more safe and courageous, one of you will say, “You can read my letter now.” Or perhaps you will read your own, out loud. But you should pray first, asking God to handle this, surrendering to Him your fears, and your lover’s fears, and your reactions to each other.

  “Help me, dear God, to see my loved one’s innocence, and please help him (or her) see mine. As we admit our weaknesses, make us strong. As we admit our fears, make our love grow deeper.”
Kiss again, before you open the letters. Then the magic will emerge, taking your words and turning them into medicine. Your vulnerability, then, will bless your love, when before it might have hurt it.

  We all make mistakes, we all have fears, and we all have weaknesses. Behind all that is our essential self. When our essential self has made contact with another, the light is dazzling and would fill the universe. The challenge of enchantment is to remain faithful to that light, to believe in it even when it is not so apparent. Then that light becomes an incandescent glow and it wraps itself around everything. The mundane begins to sparkle, not just for a few weeks, or even for a year, but for a lifetime and beyond.

  It takes devotion to invoke and maintain the light of romance. It takes the practice of forgiveness on the deepest level, the intention to focus on our beloved’s innocence, even when it’s not showing. And when that light is covered over by clouds, when he said or she said or he did or she did not, there is a deeper truth than is revealed by these machinations of someone’s personality self. The power lies in just knowing this, in being still and knowing, in being willing to let go everything except the absolute and committed knowledge that the love that you have touched in each other, and the light that it revealed, was real, is real, and shall always be real.

  Sometimes we find ourselves in horrible fights, and a part of us says, “This can’t be real!” We think that because it is true. The fight between you is not real. Only love exists on an indestructible cosmic level. Just knowing that creates the space for a miracle to happen.

  The miracle could be that two people who had been struggling and arguing just moments before now look at each other and begin to laugh. It might mean that someone apologizes. Or it might mean that one or both of you sadly, but lovingly, realizes it’s time to part, that physical proximity no longer serves your mutual growth. The enchanted issue is not whether bodies stay together or not, but whether hearts and minds are reconciled. In God’s world, content is more important than form. In the world as it is now, form is everything and content practically nothing. That is why it hurts here. That is why it is time to move on to something better.

  And God has graced us with a way.

  Dear God,

  We surrender this relationship to You

  and ask that it be used for Your purposes.

  May our resources and talents

  and energies and love

  be pooled

  and lifted up in Your service.

  May we become together

  even more than we are apart.

  May the light around us

  forever shine.

  May the space of our love

  be a space of healing

  for ourselves and all the world.

  Amen

  8

  Partnership

  I cannot get to sleep without my leg wrapped around yours. I cannot stay awake without my brain wrapped around yours. I cannot get to heaven without my heart wrapped around yours.

  So there! Have I revealed enough . . .?

  SOMETIMES ANOTHER PERSON’S energy can feel like excess baggage we can’t afford to carry. It’s as though we’re trying to lift a plane, and too much weight just isn’t an option during take-off.

  Once the plane is in the sky, however, the situation can seem to change dramatically. Where it felt before like we couldn’t take off if another person was weighing us down, it now begins to feel as though holding a plane in the sky is too big a job for just one person.

  And that’s what partners are: two people carrying the same load, two wings on the same plane, two people doing a job that is just too big for one person to do alone. The planet is being bombarded with powerful energy today; people are being given tasks too big, not so much for our physical selves to carry alone, as for one consciousness to carry alone. We need partners to share the emotional and spiritual burdens of our lives, at a time when life itself is being transformed at the very deepest levels. Sometimes you can do all the physical work by yourself, or hire or find others to help you complete it. But at the end of the day, how we long for someone to understand it all with us! When there is mischievous laughter to laugh, or painful tears to cry, we long to do that with someone who truly understands the depth of both our laughter and our tears.

  If you’re very, very lucky, you have had the experience of being one of two hearts beating in what feels like the same astral body. You use your eyes, and he uses his eyes, but really there is only one being here, with two different bodies to provide optimum functioning in the physical world. Physical separation is experienced in this situation as the fantasy and illusion that, in cosmic terms, it actually is. This is an exhilarating space, a sometimes terrifying space, because it is a field beyond the body. The world of enchanted partnership is a whole new world indeed.

  Enchantment is not just a facet of romance, but of a new, emerging planetary consciousness. It is the psychic womb out of which will be born a new humanity. Enchanted partnerships produce enchanted environments, and children who grow up in enchanted environments will forever bear the mark of its magic. They will in turn recreate the world. They will explode the myths of former times. They will receive the inheritance of our endless wealth, of love and satisfaction and peace immeasurable. Their hearts will dilate, and their genes will be altered by an outpouring of spiritual light. They will sing what we sing and they will know what we know. And even when their minds forget, their hearts will always remember.

  To yield to love is to yield to an emptiness from which there is always a sense that we might not return. It takes faith and confidence to surrender so, to an ocean that might not hold you.

  Enchantment impels us to leave old ground behind; where we have been no longer feeds us, but rather threatens to destroy us. Living only on dry land constricts our spirits and dries up our juices. Life is leading us back to sea.

  I’ve been swimming all my life, you said, but I never saw these things. Ah, you swam, but never before without the fear of drowning. Lie back, and I will swim you home. The stars will guide us, the waves will carry us, and all our fear will slip away. Surrender now. The sea caresses. Together we will meet the sky, and find our love for everything.

  Enchanted lovers do not conform to the status quo of boredom, or routine, or passionless existence. They have tasted for a moment another possibility, and while the majority of couples allow the world to whittle away at their joy and freedom, more and more now say, “Let’s stay in this light. Let’s not go back.” Let’s not go back to what we have to do; from here on out, let’s commit to the drama of ecstatic joining, and to its endless possibilities for expansion. At a certain point, no more outer growth is possible until more inner growth occurs. And this inner growth takes concerted effort; it takes all our spiritual, psychological, emotional, and even intellectual prowess to create and maintain the space of our enchantment, but the effort will make the stars in the sky even brighter. Blessings pour forth when we join hands with another and say, “In our world, at least, though we will see the demons, we will take them on. In our world, at least, though we will feel our weaknesses, we will work to transform them. In our world, at least, though we face a world that looks bitterly on love, and lovingly on guilt, we will commit to each other’s innocence.”

  As that commitment begins to permeate our consciousness, a crown floats down from the firmaments of heaven and is placed on both our heads. With that crown is given us dominion over all things fearful, a power with which to rule our inner worlds and outer kingdoms, providing for ourselves and others a new possibility for peace on earth.

  Turn to your loved one and ask yourself, “Is this my partner in a grand and passionate, sacred romantic adventure?” Your heart will say yes or your heart will say no. If the answer is yes, then within yourself, fall to your knees and thank God. If the answer is no, then ask the spirit of God to reveal to you now where you should go and what you should do to find your enchanted love. Then wait with a grateful heart, an alert mind, a
nd a joyful knowing. Around each corner there are miracles. Around each bend await more angels. Around midnight, they will come and you will know.

  IN EVERY HEART there is an inner room, where we hold our greatest treasures and our deepest pain. We hold the skeletons of our former selves, our childhood fears and insecurities, and terror at our dissociation from God’s forgiveness and love. We have built our lives not so much on the foundation of God’s love as on our best efforts to function in spite of its absence. We stumble into adulthood as broken beings, many of us, carrying the wounds of childhood on our hearts like invisible scars. Contagion seeps from the broken psychic flesh of our battered places, expressed less as vulnerable tears than as angry shrieks, until we have done our inner work. Until then, others do not feel our pain, so much as the pain we inflict on them because of it. And the cycle of suffering turns another rotation, inflicting men, women, and children with fears that will, if unchecked, destroy the world.

  Therapy, spiritual practice, prayer, meditation, men’s groups, women’s groups, seminars, retreats, alone time, tears, writing letters, doing ritual, processing with friends, sweat lodges, healing techniques, going to church, going to synagogue, going to the ashram, going to the mosque, attending support groups, doing the twelve steps, burning incense, making lists, making amends, journaling, doing service, creative visualization, saying affirmations—God knows they all help, and by now, God knows we’ve done them all. But there’s something altogether different that happens when the one you love stands before you and says, “I will descend into the fire with you, and come out on the other side. I see it all and I can take it all. I love it all. Let’s hunker down and do the work together.”