Best-selling author, Marianne Williamson, will present “The Enchanted Love Workshop: Building the Inner Temple of the Sacred and the Romantic,” on February 17 to 19 in Los Angeles. Not in the area? You can still participate via live streaming.

Participants will learn the spiritual tools of fostering powerful, joyous and intimate relationships. Valuable for both women and men seeking to either to attract a partner or deepen an existing relationship, the weekend will provide guests with valuable spiritual, psychological and emotional insight into the nature and practice of true love.

During the “Enchanted Love Workshop,” spiritual inquiry will include:

• How do we inwardly prepare ourselves for love?
• What deeper forces foster a powerful romantic relationship?
• What part does the masculine/feminine dynamic play in navigating romantic relationships?
• What is true intimacy, from a spiritual perspective, and how is it achieved?
• How can a romantic relationship become a portal to spiritual growth? And how can spiritual growth become a portal to more powerful romance?

“If I think that you’re the source of my happiness, I am tempted, at least subconsciously, to try to manipulate and control you,” Williamson said.  “And that won’t attract you; it will repel you. Once I make it my spiritual work to realize my own completion, then I approach you not with a need to steal your energy, but with a desire to play and create with you. Obviously, the latter is far more attractive.”

Williamson teaches that from a spiritual perspective, relationships are assignments: couples are brought together by a Divine Intelligence for as long a period of time as serves the mutual soul growth of both partners. When physical proximity no longer serves that growth and the relationship ends, this doesn’t necessarily denote failure. Relationships are of the spirit and not of the body, and therefore last forever on the level of mind.

“We are brought together for the purpose of healing. All of us have rough edges to be smoothed out, and one of the ways that happens is when our rough edges rub up against someone else’s,” said Williamson. “To the ego, that kind of rough experience is a reason to leave the relationship. To the Spirit, the opportunity here is to choose the mercy and compassion that smoothes out all things.”

Williamson gives the examples of a woman whose father emotionally abandoned her, meeting up with a man whose mother emotionally smothered him. Because of their childhood experiences, she might tend to be needy, while he might tend to be commitment phobic.

“The rough path is where she subconsciously tries to control him, and he subconsciously seeks to keep her at a distance,” Williamson said. “The transcendent path is where she takes responsibility for her wound, refuses to project her father’s behavior in the past onto the man standing in front of her, and prays to Spirit to heal her by helping her forgive her father and enter into the present moment not carrying her past with her. As she develops the emotional skill set to show deep appreciation for the man standing in front of her, the light of that moment casts out the neurotic thought forms carried over from the past. His work takes different form, but is essentially the same.”

According to Williamson, an authentic spiritual bond can’t be based on personality or physicality alone, because on the material level none of us are perfect. It’s when we develop the skill to see beyond the physical to the spiritual truth of who we are — and most importantly, the ability to stay with that truth even when appearances show us something different — that we transcend the ego forces which would otherwise tear us apart.

This workshop addresses the fear of love that we all feel, as well as the spiritual keys to unlocking the authenticity and true skill that allows us to connect with a beloved. “It takes conscious work to create the psychological and emotional freedom to disclose our deepest feelings to each other. The risk, the vulnerability …  such things can be emotionally perilous outside a spiritual context.” Williamson focuses on the deep practice of forgiveness, prayer and meditation as steps to the cultivation of sacred space within and between us.

“We might be tempted to think that spirituality and intimacy are very different categories. In fact, spirituality is key to our success at everything because it’s the key to our capacity to love.”

To sign up for the in-person or live streaming, visit http://www.marianne.com.

Listen to Marianne explain the seminar in the below video: