Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power of Intimate Relationships, 1999

Most of the time, we fall in love but can’t remain there. The world calls the state we were in delusion or infatuation. But we were not deluded. We were not infatuated. We merely lacked, or someone else lacked, the emotional skills to hold on to the magic when morning came. Later we would tell ourselves that that moment of magic had not been real, but that analysis is just a collective lie. We invented the lie as a way to face the disappointment of having been to the moon on a starlit night, and then fallen back down to what can seem like such a barren earth.

That lie is little more than a social conspiracy. It gives its adherents a perverse kind of conmfort to think that  our basic lack of courage is some form of psychological health…

Forget your old ideas. Forget the lies they told you. Forget them all, and you will begin to remember. There is a realm of romantic enchantment that makes the world we are currently living in seem not so very important, and not even so very real.

That realm is entered two by two. It is not just an emotional vacation spot, but in fact our newest spiritual frontier. In fact, it is where we are supposed to live. And in that place, we do not just live. In that place, we live forever.

With Enchanted Love, Marianne Williamson explores romantic love as a path of surrender to life and God.  Enchanted love occurs when two people are completely aware that their relationship is a spiritual path, which involves courage and deep inner skills. “It is an audacious ride to the center of what is, at the heart of every person. It is a bold and masterful inquiry into what two people really are and how we might become, while still on earth, the angels who reside within us.” The book also contains a series of prayers and meditations.