Enchanted Love

by Marianne Williamson

  Monogamy in many cases has become less a soulful container for the power of sex than simply a badge of ownership. In those cases, sex can easily become more attractive with those who do not lay such claim on us. A rigid insistence on monogamy can actually do more to destroy than to build the connection between two people.

  It’s often not what we do, but the internal impetus for what we do, that establishes its significance. Agreements matter. They matter deeply. And monogamy, if from the heart, is an agreement to enter into deep communion with another human being. It can be a meaningful and very sexy gift we give to someone we love, and that we cherish as a gift from them. But to throw it around self-righteously—just one of society’s leftover, no longer well-thought-out rules of behavior for a population invested in its limits to how much we will allow ourselves to love—is ridiculous and no longer worthy of who we are.

  WHAT IS our deepest attraction to monogamy? Our deepest attraction is not ownership but safety. While the mortal mind sees monogamy as a feast for guilt, the divine mind sees it as a feast for love. At the level of our souls, we do not want monogamy in order to imprison each other, but to free each other—to create a context where the deepest level of safety might occur, that the deepest level of relaxation might occur, that the deepest level of growth might occur.

  Some planes are simply two seaters; it’s just the way they’re made. There is no room in the plane for more than two people, and trying to crowd in an extra passenger could seriously endanger the flight.

  If I really allow myself to love you, then a hint of madness will come over me. You have two choices. I can be totally cool all the time, or I can fall deeply, madly in love with you. Don’t ask me for both. If you don’t want to provide a context where I feel safe, then great, I’ll stay cool. But you will probably miss the magic, which inevitably comes with risk. Only little boys say, “Show me the magic, but stay cool all the time too, will you?”

  I don’t mean pathological madness. That, I am absolutely responsible for. I understand that and I do the work. I am not Glenn Close and you are not Michael Douglas. No, I mean divine and righteous madness. I mean the healing crises induced by deep love, I mean the detoxing of the last few thousand years of dark and limited thought forms. I mean the monsters who are summoned out of their lair when the light of this love shines forth.

  And that is why monogamy helps. It’s enough to deal with all these monsters coming up, without also having to worry about whether Cheryl or Sue is more attractive to you this week than I am. If you want me to really relax, and you want me to really let go and go wild, then remove those childish issues, will you?

  Thank you. And I will do the same for you . . .

  I didn’t even take his number.

  Time can be such a threat to love. We begin to feel trapped by the illusions of the world, our limited circumstances, our withering dreams. Something about failure in any area casts a pall over every area, because it tempts us to constrict our hearts. It is painful to hope when we lack faith in ourselves. And if I look bad to myself, you start to look bad to me, too.

  The beloved doesn’t seem strong tonight, but weak and afraid and not the savior we had hoped for. He or she seems to have given up, and this brings up terror in both of us. We are no longer amazed; we are no longer turned on; we are no longer impressed; we feel trapped and sapped. Stress and strain and weariness and sorrow now hide from view the gossamer spring of earlier, more enchanting days. Our love was once a pastel veneer over every sky, whether blue or not, but those days are no longer with us.

  We need a miracle to restore our love when guilt and sorrow have strained it. We had made of our relationship an idol, perhaps, and forgotten that only God is God. Now, as we turn back to Him, and restore our bond to the source of All, then our bond to each other is miraculously healed. We can forgive ourselves for being human, once we remember the One who is perfect, and remember that He lives in us. People falter. God does not. Accepting that is key, to both acceptance of ourselves and our acceptance of each other.

  God is in love with the essence of who we are. If only we could match His mercy. . . .

  He got dressed this morning and left the bedroom floor a total mess.

  That is not your beloved.

  There are bagel crumbs all over the counter in the kitchen, and jelly on the refrigerator door.

  That is not your beloved.

  I am not his slave and I am tired of taking his shirts to the dry cleaners. He can take his shirts himself.

  That is not your beloved.

  I deserve much more than what this man is giving me.

  That is not your beloved.

  THEN WHO IS MY BELOVED!?

  Come with me, and see . . .

  The only way we can see each other truly is if we see through the eyes of God.

  Prayer and meditation are the fuel for the missile that takes us to enchanted realms. We spend an average of sixteen hours a day with our minds bombarded by the thinking of the world, and the thinking of the world does not glorify spirit. It glorifies personality, and in that dimension we inevitably fall short of the magnificence of enchantment. We have issues, we have weaknesses, we make mistakes, we fall short, we give up, we get caught, we fall down, we are human. And all of these make us, to the ego self, less ideal, less wonderful, less attractive.

  What a trap this is for the loving heart. If love is diminished by our humanness, then what chance do we have?

  The love of God is the glue that holds our hearts together when the world would pry them apart. Praying and meditating is a retreat to an enchanted castle, where we go to say, “Time out from the world. I want to know the essential truth, the most perfect truth. I want that truth to come into me, to reveal itself to me, that I might know my love. I will stay here in this miraculous silence, and commune with my Father/Mother God. The Lord will heal me of my vicious thoughts, and give me new eyes with which to see. I will remain here in His arms for as long as it takes to repair my hurting soul. And then I will return to the world, but I will not be the same. I will have remembered who I am, and I will have remembered my precious love. I will have returned to the place of our knowing. I will have seen who he really is. I will have sought salvation in the only place where I know that I can find it. Take me back to you, dear God. Take me back to love. Amen.”

  Dear God,

  Please show us

  to each other,

  and show us

  how to love.

  Amen

  11

  Bodies and Soul

  Over twenty years ago, I was living with my boyfriend in a fourth floor walk-up apartment in New York City. One flight above us lived a very unassuming couple. We crossed paths many times on the stairs, but they both appeared very quiet and rarely even said hello.

  He was a college instructor, rather fey looking, pale and small-boned. She, also quite small, appeared as if she could fade into the woodwork. They were not, in terms most of us would relate to, a very exciting-looking couple.

  And yet the noise that came through our ceiling, day in day out, from early in the morning until all hours of the night, was unbelievable. My boyfriend and I were young and in love, but our most athletic days and nights were as nothing compared to our upstairs neighbors. We would stare at each other in disbelief. “They’re doing it again!?!?!”

  In addition to the normal sounds of rocking beds and excited lovers, there was one human cry coming from their apartment over and over and over again: While we never heard a sound from him, his girlfriend ecstatically cried, “NO!!!,” so many times, in so many ways, with such passion, that all we could do was laugh, trying to drown out their sounds by putting pillows over our ears.

  It amazed me that no other word but “No” seemed to ever pass her lips. One night, having just heard another of her symphonies of “No,” I asked myself aloud, “I wonder why she never says Yes. . . .”

  THE HISTORICAL CHANGE in consciousness that defines the meaning of our age is a sh
ift in primary focus from the body to the soul. That does not mean that the body does not matter, and it certainly does not mean that the body is bad. It simply recognizes that inner levels are causal levels, and that all outer conditions but reflect an inner state.

  As the mind transforms, the body transforms. In the age now passing, the body was a house. In the age now upon us, it becomes a temple. It has housed our energies of physical survival, and is now beginning to house the energies of enlightenment. Meditation effects this change. Prayer effects this change. And when done in a consciousness of true and tender love, sex itself effects this change.

  Love heals the body. Look at any woman on the day after she was made love to by a man she adores, and who adores her too. A man’s body might register a difference, but a woman’s body literally transforms in ways a man’s does not seem to do. Our breasts, our skin, not to mention our faces, are filled with some voluptuous spirit. Both men and women walk a little bit above the sidewalk on days that follow our better nights. If there was enough happy sex in America, our crime level would be cut dramatically.

  We resist joy on this planet more than we resist war. We constantly invalidate the call of our own souls, deny the song of freedom that is sung in every heart, and suppress the appreciation and adoration we truly feel for one another. Enchantment wafts over us like a wave of perfumed air, but we are afraid of its intoxicating contents. Still yet, whether we like it or not, something new is beginning to happen. We can fight it or we can breathe through it, but labor is here. The hormones of the earth are getting ready. The cervix of the astral human is starting to expand. The tears are beginning to fill our eyes. We are breaking free. We are breaking free. We are giving birth to something more than babies. Our true selves are being born at last.

  IT IS A SAD COMMENTARY on our times that so many of us know more about sex than we know about love.

  Magazines scream out at us constantly, “What’s Sexy!” “Be Sexy!” “He or She is So Sexy!” “Sex With an Alien!” “Sex Sex Sex!”

  Whoever separated God from sex should be brought up for trial, charged with emotional crimes against humanity. They took the fun out of God, making Him appear both prudish and dour—and that was just the misdemeanor! The high crime, the true spiritual felony, was taking God out of sex. We have been damaged and broken ever since.

  Even when we love the most, when we have the best intentions and the true desire to do right by ourselves and others, we often find that sex can be like a bomb going off in someone’s emotional life. What is it that we need to know about sex that isn’t obvious on the surface?

  First of all, men and women are different. We see sex differently; different hormones run through our biological systems. Nature needed different things from us, and programmed us differently to get what it needed. For millions of years, nature needed men to go from one woman to another, impregnating us as they went along in order to propagate the species. And women needed to settle down with the children, to nurture them so that they would grow into adulthood. Those impulses running through our systems for at least a few hundred thousand years turned man’s instinctive response after sex into, “I gotta go,” while a woman’s still tends to be, “Let’s settle down.”

  Therefore, it is incumbent upon wise men and women to take responsibility for the powerful impulses that sex brings up in all of us. Hormones are released into the body of a woman when she has had sex with a man, creating a chemical bond whether she wants that bond or not. So it is definitely not a good idea to be hooked on someone who did not consciously, benevolently, and with full responsibility ask that you be. A man’s excitement in bed is great. But only a cold or foolish woman still thinks that that smile on his face when he sees that smile on yours is worth months and years of painful nights to follow. And yet that pain is bound to come, if his smile reflected the yearning of his body but not the yearning of his heart.

  Most men will be pretty honest about this subject, if a woman has the nerve to ask him to be. Did the man tell you, “Our having sex means I will continue to call you?” Did the man tell you, “Our having sex means I won’t be having sex with other women?” Did the man tell you, “Our having sex means I am entering a sacred place with you, where trying to get to know you will be a dominant factor in my life?”

  Women often avoid that particular conversation. “I didn’t want to ruin the magic of the moment.” Great. Now where’s the magic? “I didn’t want to pressure him.” What, he can have sex with you, but he shouldn’t have to answer any questions? “He said this was only casual, but the heat was so intense that night, I thought he didn’t mean it.” Darling, grow up!

  Women, and men too, often feel totally conflicted regarding the emotional responsibilities that go along with sexual encounters. Luckily, as we get older, the desperate edge which is the greatest blinder of all begins to subside and reality becomes a little clearer. Finally, conversation doesn’t seem like an outrageous sacrifice, the great destroyer of a passionate moment. I laugh when I remember the days when one could never quite make it from the front door to the living room, and could only hope that the floor was clean. Now one knows how to linger over phrases, and in truth, it makes for a sexier life.

  When sex isn’t magical, then sex shouldn’t happen. And when it is magical, its power shouldn’t be underestimated. The energy exchange between two people making love is far more significant than rationalists think. That is why we can become so deeply vulnerable to someone once sex has taken place. The question is whether someone has the personality structure to contain the power of last night’s behavior, the morning after and the morning after that. Will she get clingy and needy? Will he withdraw? This is where women often start getting overactive and men start wimping out. All of this is why, without some kind of commitment to the larger relationship, making love can be so emotionally risky.

  Sometimes, if we’re very lucky, a hand is laid upon us which has the power, by its very touch, to claim us for its own. And once we are claimed, there is nowhere else to go. There is no man or woman or child who has quite such a silver cord wrapped around us, pulling us always in the direction of their love. Someone has put a stake on our emotional ground. We can love another but not belong to another. Once we know to whom we belong, nothing changes what we know.

  It is suddenly clear that what we can learn with this one, and achieve with this one, makes every other issue pale. The alchemy between you illumines your path, leading you straight into the chamber where who you are comes up for total review and where you’re going together becomes a mythical adventure. There is no blessing like being known by one who knows you this deeply. There is no mystery more alluring than this love.

  We are then compelled to jump out of one orbit and into another, to make a quick run for freedom. We are compelled to use in one fell swoop the moves we have practiced for years. Every cell in our being cries out to us, “Act.” Sometimes it is a sign of mastery to change major life circumstances after thinking about it for only fifteen minutes, and a sign of weakness to do anything less.

  And that is because we know what we know, and we are not willing to go foggy in our lives anymore and pretend that we do not. We are not willing to hide behind the illusions of the world, the bourgeois conventions of a society which honors rules before love. We intend to go forward. We intend to take the leap of faith. We intend to grasp our love to our chest and never, ever, ever let go.

  So many of us have spent years discussing the things that went wrong in love, and we have only just begun the conversation of how to do it right. The most powerful way to transform a dysfunctional past is to embrace a functional present. The most powerful way to attract great love is to fill our minds with the thought of it. The most powerful way to ensure we will be loved is if we make ourselves truly lovable.

  Sometimes people are so eager to be giving in bed, but have no interest in giving anything at all when outside of bed! A prevalent neurosis in intimate relationships is how loath many people are to
give anything up. A narcissistic generation grew up with the attitude, “I have my wants, desires, needs, habits and predilections. I have no intention of giving any of them up to be with you.”

  When love’s enchantment is of interest to us, then doing something, or not doing something, for no other reason than that it pleases our partner, is hardly seen as failure to be authentically oneself, but rather mastery at the art of love.

  A couple came to one of my groups saying they had a problem. Melissa, said George, was a “touchy-feely” sort of woman, disposed toward light, affectionate physical contact with whomever she was speaking to. According to George, however, she displayed this affection with other men in a way that he felt went over the line, from platonic affection to sexual flirtatiousness. I asked Melissa for her take on this. She described a situation where she had touched a mutual friend of theirs, and George hadn’t liked it. “But I’m not even conscious of it when I’m doing it!” she exclaimed.

  I asked George to describe that moment.

  “She didn’t just touch him,” he said. “She stroked his neck and that kind of thing.”

  I looked at Melissa. She didn’t argue.

  “How would you be with it if she hugged people, even men, upon seeing them?” I asked him.

  “That would be fine with me,” he said. “I don’t care about that. It’s when there’s this sexual edge to it that I mind.”