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Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships

Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships

List Price: $14.00
Your Price: $10.50
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Truly, an enchanting read.
Review: "Enchanted Love" is simply a beautiful book. Particularly in the introduction and through the early chapters, it truly is an enchanting journey along a path of romance into a woman's essence. While some of the enchantment seems to be abandoned in the later chapters, where she turns more philosophical, the poetic dialogues that illustrate the book have the ability to carry the reader back into the greater depths of love where enchantment lives, and bring bearing to her more surface, technical beliefs and observations.

In particular, I was surprised by her views on monogamy. They seem almost to be an intrusion on the feelings carried earlier in the book; but as she says, she is a complex woman who makes no apologies for being, "high maintenance". She does, indeed, appear to be a woman leading the way into a new era of open expressiveness and freedom, although I'm not convinced through reading this book that her ideas are as independent as they are rebellious, which is where the intrusion is made on the enchantment.

Still, from a man's perspective, reading this book has the familiar comfort of laying in a lover's arms for a beautifully intimate moment. Williamson's words often assume the texture of a golden honey being poured into the reader's soul, and bear a sense of authenticity and subject-knowledge reminiscent of her work in "A Woman's Worth" This book is highly recommended reading for anyone who has ever felt in love.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: interesting, philosophical
Review: ---CASE FOR---
she's a smart lady with a lot of good knowledge. I really like her illustration about holding mans dream, that story alone was worth getting the book. She talked about true love that gives, and she says we only get to keep what we give away. I really like her comments on a relationship, that we become united in spirit. She simply throws out few thoughts on a subject of love and relationships. Not a guide to marriage or relationship. Would I recommend this book to a friend? Yes, only because I haven't read other books on relationship, so I don't know what else is out there. But it is an enjoyable reading.

---CASE AGAINST---
She had some things to say and a lot of it seems like she was saying just to fill up her book. I skipped pages where she was simply expressing her thoughts, filling up the book. its a good book, but if you're having problems with your marriage, and need some direct advise to solve your problem, this book only straches the surface and doesn't go it to deapth of relationships.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: disillusioned by enchanted love
Review: I am not one for self help books, I really don't buy in to the dysfunctional ways of our society. I have read every Marianne Williamson book on the market (more than once.) I like what she has to say. I am not a literary scholar..just a woman making it in this world. My spiritual journey has been long, profound, and quite beautiful..I have some questions for her though, I would love to pick her brain. Enchanted love was my favorite of all her work and an awakening to spiritual growth and letting go of all that I was raised with. Most of us believing we have to be strong,get a college degree, and only depend on ourselves. Most of us have a low opinion of men, marriage and have lost the key to what those relationships should mean in our lives. We so desperately want to be married and live the "dream" but that dream has three parts one of our mothers, one of our grandmothers, and one of our own ..we were disillusioned. What I wonder and question is when we have done the work,come full circle, discovered our true selves, and find the key..the key being..loving yourself more, believing in the Word of the Lord, and ultimately surrendering to the Word, and surrendering to that child like state that we all want to inherintly surrender to...I ask only this: Marianne what are we to do when we believe in the power of your words, of His word, surrender, and are ultimately left in pain, that pain we were so afraid of to begin with? I have prayed the prayers and believed in the Word..this has left me in more pain than I have ever known or imagined. To love like this is a very big risk, it is so unconditional, so beautiful, and when this happens it is very few that can reciprocate-even from those of God.. I wish I could talk to her about this book..it has affected my life in a very powerful way. It wasn't the book alone, however,it was all of the actions and the journey prior to reading this book that led me to such a beautiful place of seeing those around me. I see miracles happen every day..I feel the Lord stronger than I have ever felt..but to love like that is very painful. Sometimes I wonder if what our mothers taught us would not be better. "you don't need a man!" I don't want to believe that, but after taking those steps she outlined in her book and being left where I am now..I can not help but wonder who is emotionally better off?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Insightful and At Times Divinely Inspired
Review: Love relationships can be our greatest joy and our greatest sorrow! Ever wonder why some lovers run from us while others choose to stay? Williamson gets to the heart and soul of what lies (or often "lurks") below the surface of intimate relationships. In this book, she uses her own past relationship experiences as examples and gives examples she's gleaned from friends and couples she has worked with professionally.

After perusing the following excerpt from the book I knew this was a book I had to read.
"Often upon seeing the weaknesses in each other, we have the tendency to go "Yuck!" and walk away on some level. But often it is not a change in partners but rather a change in perception that delivers us to the love seek. When we shift our view of the purpose of intimacy - from serving our own needs as we define them to serving a larger process of healing - then an entirely new opportunity presents itself. Our wounds have been brought forward, not to block the experience of love, but to serve it." Later Williamson writes, "The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go." and, "We unconsciously seek the relationships that challenge us to deliver on our most soulful selves, as well as tempt us to fall into our most neurotic patterns."

I cannot recommend this book strongly enough. It should be used by parents, teachers, ministers and counselors to help young adults and couples of all ages understand what's really going on when people unintentionally touch their partner's emotional wounds.

Short, thoughtful, compassionate, at times divinely inspired, easy to read and understand, this book rates as one of my top ten.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Average effort...
Review: Marianne Williamson has some useful things to say, but she doesn't always express herself well. She is clearly well-read -- in Eastern and Western philosophy, New Age and New Thought, and draws on her knowledge in examining romantic relationships. Her basic point in this book is that surrendering your relationships to the Holy Spirit will align them with their true purpose. People are naturally loving, Williamson believes, but have been worn down by their ego's desire to attack. The goal of the healed person is to abandon the negativity they've learned and return to a loving and creative state that is natural. This is as good a theory as any in pop psychology, and may well heal a lot of troubled hearts.

That said, Williamson at times veers into laughable tangents that make her sound like Anne "Celestia" Heche. She may well be enlightened, but that doesn't always make all her thoughts coherant. It is a bit frustrating to find good advice mixed with prose that makes you wince.

Not her best effort, but I still enjoyed it for the most part.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Hmmm....
Review: Marianne Williamson is a very intelligent, well read, articulate author/speaker who strongly feels that she has something important to say from her observations of the human condition. When I first heard her speak in the early 1990s, it was evident that her appeal was mostly with women, based on what she perceives their experience to be.

Yet reading the descriptions of all her romantic endeavors interspersed between the poems and New Age homilies, what comes across in this book is a disconnected series of events whose common theme seems to be that the author has always sought depth and meaning in romantic relationships, none of which appear to have lasted too long. Hmmm...I wonder what kind of book might have resulted if she had made a commitment to making just ONE of those relationships work on a long term basis...would it sound very enchanting after that?

As someone who has been married for 20+ years and who has co-parented three daughters, I do not identify with Ms. Williamson's over-idealized prescriptions for love and relationships. I also concur with another reviewer's assessment that Ms. Williamson is probably not the most qualified person to write a book like this. One analogy might be that taking Ms. Williamson's advice on romance could be compared to taking driving lessons from someone with a long history of traffic accidents and several junked cars in their driveway.







Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Important points
Review: Marianne Williamson makes some important points about how love, and relationships in particular, can help us in our spiritual growth. Relationships, whether we see them as negative or positive experiences in our lives, teach us a lot about ourselves. And isn't this what life is all about?

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Important points
Review: Marianne Williamson makes some important points about how love, and relationships in particular, can help us in our spiritual growth. Relationships, whether we see them as negative or positive experiences in our lives, teach us a lot about ourselves. And isn't this what life is all about?

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: For fans only
Review: Marianne Williamson, lecturer on metaphysics and spirituality, turns her attention to romantic love in Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power or Intimate Relationships. The book is in thirteen chapters with titles such as "The Enchanted Sea" and "Of Space Captains and Angels." It also contains poems and prayers by the author.

One of Ms. Wiliamson's earlier books, A Return to Love, explained some of the principles of A Course in Miracles as they relate to issues in daily life. A Return to Love was a very clear, well written book, that I have enjoyed reading at least five times over the past few years. Unfortunately I found Enchanted Love something of a disappointment. It lacks the organization around clear topics that one finds in A Return to Love. Enchanted Love contains some very good paragraphs, but the book often seems like a not very interesting assortment of preachy pronouncements. Although some of the author's statements are explained with examples, others are simply uttered, and one may well wonder "Is that really true?" or even "What does that mean?"

We are told, for example: "I once heard Pat Allen say that men produce into women's appetites. Men are by nature producers, and one of the things they produce into is female desire. From our sexual lives to our emotional lives, that is an archetypal pattern of great beauty and significance." I do not have the vaguest idea who Pat Allen is. I have never before heard the verb "produce" followed by the preposition "into." I cannot imagine what "produce into" means, but "producing into" certainly does not sound like a pattern of beauty to me. Perhap there are circles of people who know of Pat Allen and who speak of "producing into appetites." Who knows? I don't. One wonders what sort of editorial process the book went through.

Ms. Williamson writes, "Marrieds and singles are constantly sending telepathic communications to each other. There is a constant conversation everyone knows is there, but which few dare to verbalize." I was unaware of such constant telepathic communication. Is it really taking place?

Although some of the author's poems and prayers may serve as worthwhile meditations, some are quite banal. One poem, for example, contains the line "Your issues are more interesting now." Is that poetry, or merely the sort of psychobabble one may routinely hear at twelve-step meetings?

Fans of Ms. Williamson may find that the book contains some interesting material and food for thought. For those unacquainted with Ms. Williamson, I would recommend A Return to Love, but not Enchanted Love.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Love this!
Review: Marrianne Williamson's work is both real and honest. Rather than couch things in a concepts that are alien or extremely religious, she talks to you about the realities of existing. Of how things will not always be easy, about how you will lose your way, and honestly how to see people clearly. Growth is messy, it's not neat, maturity is not easy, nor is spirtiuality delicate work, but with assistance from a tape like this you can see yourself clearly and how to bridge yourself from concept to human to spiritual being.


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