Turn off the lights or keep them on. Either way, I will see you.
Call me back or do not call back. Either way, I will hear you.
Tell me yes or tell me no. Either way, I will love you.
FORGIVENESS BLESSES EVERYTHING. It surrounds us with grace.
Forgiveness is not what happens when someone has done something wrong, but you in your spiritual superiority have the magnanimity to forgive. That is not forgiveness, but judgment—supercilious and, at its core, self-righteous.
Real forgiveness, from a metaphysical perspective, means we realize that only love is real. All the love we have ever received is real, and all the love we ever gave is real. Everything else is a hallucination of the mortal mind. This doesn’t mean it’s not happening in physical terms, but only that beyond the physical, there is another world. Through the eyes of forgiveness, we can see that world. Through grace, we can actually go there.
Forgiveness would have us overlook each other’s errors, not in a naïve way but in a wise way. I might register something you did, and duly note it. But that doesn’t mean I have to hold it against you. The faults of the personality are not sins that God would punish, but rather mistakes that He would correct. Forgiveness is a divine corrective that lifts us above the pain of life and delivers us to higher, sweeter ground. And God would have us love as He loves, in order to achieve His peace.
Forgiveness does not mean we lack boundaries, standards, or principles. God’s love does not destroy our brain cells; it hardly makes us stupid. Forgiveness doesn’t make us weaker but very much stronger, as it brings our personalities into alignment with the knowledge of the soul.
The key to forgiveness is not to seek the innocence of the beloved but to assume the innocence of the beloved. The closer we get to someone, the more temptation there will always be to interpret that person’s behavior in a judgmental or defensive way. Making forgiveness a fundamental commitment is key to an enchanted love.
Within each of us there is an innocent place, unchanged by our mistakes. Knowing this is the antidote to the darkness of the world, as it stands for the possibility of transformation and renewal. It repudiates the insidious ways that the ego mind would always have us attack each other, in large ways and small. International and domestic conflicts emerge from the same point, and will end in the same point. Forgiveness is the salvation of the human race.
“He has a lot of issues.” “She’s holding you emotionally hostage.” “This is a very co-dependent relationship.” “He clearly takes you for granted.” How often have we said those words, or heard them? And how often, in fact, they’re very true. But psychological relevance can be a double-edged sword; if we’re not careful, it’s just another temptation to surrender to the spiritually barbaric urge to attack a brother, yet pretend we didn’t. We claim then that guilt is not the issue. But it’s always the issue. The thought that someone is guilty is the cornerstone of hell. The thought that someone is innocent is the cornerstone of heaven. And heaven and hell aren’t after we die; heaven and hell are right here, right now.
Romance can be a holy place, dedicated to the experience of heaven on earth. But that can only occur if the perception of our mutual innocence is a sacred commitment. Ironically, and devastatingly, how often an intimate relationship is anything but that. How often it becomes the most violent of places, where emotional knives come out of many hidden pockets, and gashes to the heart are common. For those of us who have suffered those wounds, or even inflicted them on others, another alternative presents itself: to make our intimate relationship a sanctuary from guilt. Yes, we will fall short of that. Yes, we will forsake this commitment and have to come back to our hearts. But as soon as two people speak their word, saying, “Our commitment is to the experience of our mutual innocence,” then there is a grace and protection around the relationship that would not have been there otherwise.
It’s so obvious that all of us have suffered, and all of us have made mistakes in life. Yet all of us are trying our best. We can change our perception regarding the nature of human error, knowing that what is not love is but a call for love. Why not—if instead of mistrusting you—I assume you’re wounded, just like me and everyone else? Why not see the healing of our wounds as the reason we were drawn to each other? An intimate relationship will either magnify our guilt or magnify our innocence, depending on which we are committed to. And in our commitment to each other’s innocence lies our commitment to the love of God. In our forgiveness lies our healing, and we can only be healed in ourselves of what we are willing to forgive in others.
I call up in you what I see in you. That does not mean I will stand for nonsense. It does not mean I will not have healthy boundaries. It does not mean I will play any games. It does not mean you can take me for granted, or pull wool over my eyes, or act like a child. But it means I will keep my loving eye on you—the real you—and I will always relate to that person I have seen. That you can trust—that I will always be true to the truth I have seen within you.
Such a love is calling to us. On the other side of the games we play is the yearning of the soul to play no games at all. As we heal, we drop them. As we love, we drop them faster. After decades of dealing with the anger that lay hidden like a cancer beneath the surface of our emotional skins, turning all of us into psychological sumo wrestlers, our healing crisis is beginning to subside. It is no longer winter but the spring of our emotional cycle, and love, quite literally, is in the air.
So open your mouth and take this candy. It is very sweet and it will fill you up. Then, if you do not eat dinner, it will be a very good thing. You do not need dinner. What you need is my sweetness, as I need yours.
We will eat dinner later, when it has become irrelevant.
Soul and personality breathe life into each other. Personality without soul is dry and heavy, but soul without strength of personality can be leaky and lightweight. The integration of the two is a spiritual art form.
My falling madly in love with you is a function of my soul. Yet the fact that I trust myself to surrender to the experience—because I know I won’t do anything stupid, that I will not shirk my worldly responsibilities or abdicate my own strength—is because I have confidence in my personality. Often, people avoid psychological work, thinking their soulfulness makes up for any personality “outs.” Or conversely, people avoid tending to their own souls because, hey, they’re so psychologically hip, who needs divine illumination?
Enchanted intimacy demands mastery in both areas and harmony between them. We are both human and angel, regular guy and mythical king, earth mother and good witch. We are sexual partners having a good time, as well as priests and priestesses opening the doors to sacred realms. Forget one, and you miss the power. Forget the other, and you miss the fun.
If our personalities are honed, but our souls are unprepared, then there might be all kinds of good coming out of a relationship, but there will not be enchantment. On the other hand, if souls are willing, but psyches are unschooled, then the relationship will be splattered with psychic blood soon enough. We enter a tunnel at the beginning of love, functioning as best we can. But we exit the tunnel having been transformed, or we must one day go back and enter again. We are on this earth with work to do, and relationships are like laboratories where the work gets done. Without that work, there is no growth. Being open to work on ourselves, and being open to relationships, amounts ultimately to the same thing. What situation are we ever in that does not involve a relationship in some way?
Some of the most important work we do on romantic relationships is when we’re not in them. How we think about love when it is not yet standing in front of us does much to create what it will be when it is. If we’ve got negative thoughts about intimacy when we’re alone, those thoughts are not going to miraculously change when an intimate partner gets here—unless we look at them and let them go. Otherwise, those thoughts will run rampant over a new relationship the way weeds grow rampant over new growth in a garden.
Our fears take many forms in the face of love. Sometimes we feel we’re damaged goods of sorts, and who would want us anyway? Thoughts like that can keep love from even entering. People can talk to us till they’re blue in the face about how that’s just negative thinking, and we’ve got to change it. Well it is negative thinking, but by ourselves we can’t change it. Let’s be very clear about this: Love is a Miracle. It’s a God Job. There is a mystery here, and forgetting that places us at a distinct disadvantage in both attracting love and maintaining it.
When love isn’t in our lives, it’s on the way; that is the nature of the universe. If you know that a special guest is coming at five o’clock, do you spend the day messing up the house? Of course not. You prepare. And that is what we should do for love.
Dear God,
I want to be lovable,
and prepared for a beloved.
Please remove from me the walls
in front of my heart.
Please take from me
the games I play
to deny myself
the joy of life.
Please make me new,
that I might know
an enchanted romance.
Then send to me
my heart’s delight.
Please open up the heavenly gates,
that love might flood my soul.
Amen
Partnerships exist, at the highest level, because the celestial staircase stops at a certain point, and we cannot climb farther until we find our beloved. There is just so much work you can do on yourself, sitting alone in your meditation chair. You can say, “Dear God, I hate it when that reactive part of myself comes forward. I can’t believe I do this,” and God will hear you. But His answer will be that man who says to you, “I do not appreciate your reacting this way, and I will leave you if this behavior continues.” Then you learn the lesson on a whole new level, not just abstractly but experientially. You have a chance to actually practice: to play your part in the relationship from a nonreactive place within you, to choose to be your higher self, to build mastery where before you were weak. Your thinking about this mattered; your praying about this mattered; your meditations about this mattered—but stepping up to the plate in the relationship itself will make the ultimate difference between lesson learned and lesson just thought about. Similarly, trying to “fix” that part of yourself through mere psychotherapeutic or self-help approaches probably won’t be enough to truly change you, either. It takes real life experience, and the grace of God, to make a person truly change.
PART OF forgiving people is releasing them from our own agendas. This is a million times easier to say than to do.
I was very upset one day because someone hadn’t called me when he said he would. A small thing, a drama like that, but it doesn’t always feel small when you’re in it. My friend hadn’t called for a week, though we were mid-sentence in a very intense emotional conversation the last time we had spoken. A huge anxiety began building up inside of me as the week wore on.
I went back and forth between blaming him and blaming myself. The ego doesn’t care who you blame, as long as you blame someone. But just because a situation is painful, it doesn’t mean that someone necessarily has to be at fault. Blame doesn’t even have to enter into the calculation. All of us are innocent in God’s eyes.
I blessed him, I blessed myself, but the pain continued. I witnessed this as objectively as I could, telling myself that obviously I was still judging someone or else I would be at peace. I realized that while I didn’t judge him, or myself, on very superficial levels, I was still thinking that (1) this is simply how men behave (no judgment there, of course!), and (2) I attract these men, which is my dysfunction (not exactly self-esteem). The pain I felt was like the pain of having the flu—you don’t remember it until it happens again, and then you realize that you know this pain quite well. I prayed for peace. I wanted a miracle. I wanted to live my life that day without this anxiety tearing at me.
I remembered the idea from A Course in Miracles that only what we are not giving can be lacking in any situation. I realized then that the problem wasn’t that this man behaved a certain way; the real problem was that that particular behavior garnered my disapproval. It was not his action, but rather my own closed heart, that was causing me pain. The problem, at the deepest level, was not that he hadn’t called, but that I thought that he should. What my ego had interpreted as “men always acting this way” was really just a wall they always hit, past which I wasn’t willing to let them be who they were without judging them for it. Of course, they were always going to bust me on that, because the purpose of relationships is to expand us, and where our love is conditional, we need expansion.
Both people carry our wounds into a relationship. Obviously, he had his, but his issues are not my business. My own issue in this situation was unforgiveness, the limits to my capacity to accept people as they are. Most of us have places where, for whatever reason, our capacity for true forgiveness stops. The path to God, the path to our healing, is the path to our capacity for unconditional love. My love was a love that said, “I will love you—until you act this way or that way.” My wounds—not just his—were clearly at issue here.
Some people would say, “But do you have to date someone who says they’re going to call, and then doesn’t?” Absolutely not. The point is, until I can forgive that kind of behavior, I will always be encountering it. Forgiveness doesn’t mean I won’t have the ability to make choices or own my own power; it just means I can make my decisions freely, without blame or anxiety. Such a position is in fact a thousand times more powerful than anger.
Clearly, I said to myself, I need to get over this man. I remember saying to a girlfriend, “He’s not available for the experience.” But then I heard myself say, “Oh yeah? Who’s not available here?” If I had shared what I thought was love with this man, then from a spiritual perspective, the love is not determined by whether he does or does not call. Love is content and not form. His behavior is not what defines our love. As long as we are setting the agenda for someone else’s behavior, then we are seeking to be their jailer, not their lover, and we will not know peace.
If our emotional stability is based on what other people do or do not do, then we have no stability. If our emotional stability is based on love that is changeless and unalterable, then we attain the stability of God. “Release him, Marianne,” I said to myself. “All minds are joined, and he can feel, if only subconsciously, this pressure to be who I want him to be. Get off his case.”
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.