A Golden Love: Relationships of Divine Enchantment

Contents

Acknowledgments 

Introduction

A Golden Love: A Spiritual Quest 

Part One

Searching for a Heart of Gold    

Chapter One    

Chapter Two    

Chapter Three    

Chapter Four    

Chapter Five    

Chapter Six    

Chapter Seven    

Chapter Eight    

Part Two

The Golden-Love Relationship  

Sharing a life of Enchantment    

Chapter Nine    

Chapter Ten    

Chapter Eleven    

Chapter Twelve    

Chapter Thirteen    

Chapter Fourteen    

Epilogue

Our Blessing

Notes from the Cover Artist and Illustrator

In Memoriam

Appendix A

Bibliography

Resources

Endnotes  

Gratefully Dedicated to

Our meditation teacher

The fire of Her grace has lit up our hearts with the golden light of divine love

Acknowledgments 

Our heart-felt thanks to the many golden couples we surveyed and interviewed. We embedded many of their quotes and insights throughout this book. While some have chosen to be anonymous, we would like to publically thank Steve and Lokita Carter (www.ecstaticliving.com ), founders of Institute for Ecstatic Living, for teaching us safe and loving tantra (yes, we are still enthusiastic practitioners!); Sage Taylor Kingsley and Mark Goddard (www.loveandspirit.org ) who reassured us that there are indeed other golden couples like us; Nevin Valentine M.A. and Darrell Holdaway, (www.mentorcouple.com) Imago educators and relationship coaches who inspired our thoughts about the importance of the Imago process to deepen romantic connection; Madhu and Wendy Mann, fellow travelers on the golden path who showed us a shining example of a love relationship focused on spirituality and living life from the heart.

Thank you to Diane Carlson, M.A. for the ethereal artwork and editorial work. Thanks also to Claudia A. Frantz, B.S. for her editorial review of this book.

Introduction

A Golden Love: A Spiritual Quest 

This is not a book about what goes wrong in relationships or how to fix problems in marriages. We wish to share about what is working well for happy, high-functioning couples who experience their relationships as easeful. It is a glimpse into how the divine can manifest in romantic human relationships, a glimpse into the dream that we all share of what is possible in life. Indeed, it is a path to an open meadow of bliss beyond the complex thickets of our modern lives. This book is a journey for you, the reader, to peer into a world of connectedness, happiness and joy that can be found within a sacred partnership. If you are single, you can use this book as a true-north compass. It will guide you in the direction of your dreams.

We wrote this book together. We refer to our sacred partnership as a golden-love relationship. We speak both in our individual voices as well as our conjoined voice. We also include the voices of other golden-love couples like us who miraculously discovered themselves living in an enchanted relationship free from conflict and adversarial modes of relating. We offer all these stories and whatever wisdom and guidance we can muster in the following pages. We wish everyone to experience a golden-love relationship.

Despite the flood of romance novels and romantic movies that cater to our longing to find true love, many give up seeking happiness in a relationship, due to disappointments along the way. After relationship failures, they no longer believe it is even possible. Come with us on this journey. We will show you that it is not only possible, but that it is even better than your dreams. The path already exists within you. We are here to humbly point to the power that you secretly carry in your own heart and mind. We welcome you to this journey with all of our hearts.

This discovery, this blessing we live each day in a golden-love relationship, is what we know so many people want these days. We have looked around and have discovered that golden-love relationships are rare. Because they are rare, some people assume they don’t exist. To get a sighting of a golden-love couple is something like what bird watchers feel when they come upon the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker, once thought extinct but now resurfacing in greater numbers. Our hope is that by describing the golden love phenomenon, the numbers of these rare and extraordinary couples will grow. We hope that what we have written will inspire others to nurture the good qualities that create a golden-love experience.

From time to time we have been asked to explain our good fortune, why we are the way we are. After puzzling over this, we realized that it boiled down to these two questions:

Why are so many wonderful people unable to find a sacred partnership they feel completely fulfilled with?

and

How is it that some couples find themselves in the relationship of their dreams: easeful, safe, connected and filled with joy?

And so we created a workshop, "Searching for a Heart of Gold: Finding Your Spiritual Life Partner." Our first workshops were modestly attended, but a high percentage of wonderful people found sacred partnerships afterword. With encouragement from this success and some soul searching on our part, we decided to write a book expanding on the content from the workshop.

Over the years, we have expanded the content of our book to include more description and explanation about the sweetness of being in a golden-love relationship.

This is a relationship with no conflict, a sacred partnership in which each person feels free to express his or her entire personality, while the connection of the heart builds subtly over time. All of the clichés of working at relationships (such as periods of disenchantment, and the endless litany of rules and expectations) simply do not apply here.

We have sought out and surveyed a few of these golden-love couples who agreed to share their stories as well as some of the secrets of their deep happiness, bliss, and good fortune. Their voices are woven in throughout this book in order to illustrate the astonishing happiness within a golden-love relationship. We hope that readers of this book who are single will see the reality of golden-love relationships and will be inspired to seek sacred partnerships that are filled with joy and ease. In addition, couples who are deeply happy provide inspiration to those who are seeking this type of relationship.

One of these inspiring couples wrote to us and described their happiness in this way.

We feel that anyone who finds love like this is blessed forever, and that this is what so many are seeking, yet never find. Even to have one day together would be worth the search of a lifetime. Yet how lucky we are to have found each other in our young adulthood, to come together in love and to even have the gift of bringing beautiful children into this world and to raise them with love. If only this world were filled with children who grow up in a household filled with such love! Our marriage is the foundation of the home, and we are aware of the importance of nurturing the us. This blesses the children as well because they shine in the light of our love. As we grow spiritually as individuals and sacred partners, this models a healthy dynamic centered in mutual respect, appreciation, gratitude and compassion. Our children, we believe- because they see firsthand what healthy, spiritual, harmonious marriage and love really is- will never settle for less.

In the first half of this book we share what we have learned about the search for a spiritual life partner, for the heart of gold partner you are meant to share life with. We take time to explain how the path is open to everyone to become a golden soul in preparation for a sacred partnership. The spiritual partner you seek has a heart of gold, as do you. Once you have found each other, the two of you together will mirror back and forth the divinity that is your true nature. You will then become what we call a golden-love couple.

Part One

Searching for a Heart of Gold    

"A lifetime without love is of no account.

Love is the water of life.

Drink it down heart and soul."

Rumi

Chapter One    

Our Golden Stories

Laura’s Notes about Golden Love

He was one of those types of people who enjoyed talking about his personal life to strangers. "Why do relationships always have to be so much work?!!" he blurted out in exasperation. Conversations like this seem to happen to me a lot. I have never been quite sure if it happens because of people’s compulsion to share anything that pops into their head to anyone who will listen, or if it is something about me that puts people at ease enough to say whatever is on their mind. Since he was chattering away to someone else as I entered the waiting room of the eye doctor, I decided this outpouring had nothing to do with me but was primarily a case of his compulsion at work here.

He was, however, very sincere in his inquiry about the nature of relationships. I sighed. I strongly believe that relationships don’t have to be so much work. In fact, they can be utterly effortless and uplifting. If I had sensed this gentleman was glibly throwing out negative statements just to get me to chime in, I would have shrugged and returned to reading my waiting room magazine. However, this time I turned to him and responded with one of the truths that I know about relationships. I said, If the individuals in the couple are sincerely working on their own stuff, on their own issues and taking responsibility for their own ego, there would be no need to work hard on the couple relationship.

My sincere but compulsive friend offered a wide-eyed blink. After a few moments of speechlessness, he drew in a deep breath and said, That is the wisest thing I have ever heard about relationships. Where did you learn that? It was a serendipitous moment in what had previously been a mundane morning.

We then launched into deeper conversation about qualities that allow a couple to live a life of love and bliss together without the socially expected hard work. As I talked further about compatibility, trust, the ability to process deeply together, and the importance of shared spirituality, I watched my new friend turn into a giant sponge, soaking up everything and responding with a few gasps and head nodding, and sometimes giving examples of things that were not working so well in his newly formed love relationship. I believe he, like all of us, truly wanted to know how to be happier and to experience more love in his life.

I consider such chance conversations a great gift to me, for every time I have conversations with people about these concepts, I gain clarity about an entire set of qualities, characteristics, and personal practices that support a loving, caring, and blissful relationship. Craig and I have spent countless hours discussing these qualities that we see in our relationship. Our conjoined clarity on this topic has led us to this attempt to describe what we call a golden love relationship. Using our own