I JUST WATCHED another "chick flick." Hollywood's rendition of romance is fun on a cold January night. We can curl up with a blanket and a bowl of popcorn and laugh and cry with our heroine. Romance on a screen warms our hearts and releases some chemicals through our tears that leave our bodies relaxed and our Souls glowing. Unfortunately, it also sets up us naïve ones for a big thump when we don't find romance like Cameron Diaz or Meg Ryan.

I married too young the first time. Ours was a "high school romance" complete with sock hops and James Dean. We married a year out of high school for me and just as he was graduating from college. I didn't start college until I was 38, when it felt like our three kids were ready for a college student mom. My high school sweetheart and I divorced when we had been married 23 years. We had grown apart. I don't recommend picking a life partner when you are in the 9th grade.

In the middle of our divorce, I moved to Connecticut to assist Bruce Greyson with the research on Near-Death Experiences. I had never lived alone, moving out of my parent's house the day I married. Now at the age of 42 I found myself in an apartment in Hartford, Connecticut. My car was broken into three or four times. The bag ladies on the street in front of our building were a constant reminder of the future I had chosen, one that had no security. Research assistants could be "pink slipped" or let go any time that funding ran out, only to be rehired when new monies were received.

But living in the city alone in an old apartment building seemed so romantic. Didn't Sigourney Weaver do it in Ghostbusters! (I had watched that movie countless times during our initial separation. It was held over at the dollar movie theater near our house.) Ghostbusters kept me laughing during the initial crazy time at the beginning of a gut-wrenching, long-term marriage break up.

Dating was not one of my favorite activities during the next seven years. I had to stop setting myself up for every new date being the possible "love of my life" or "the man of my dreams."

I met Charlie in 1985, the same year I moved to Connecticut. I was at a conference in Washington DC and he was there too. There was a panel discussion at the end of the day with two of my colleagues, Ken Ring and Stan Grof (with whom I had just taken a one-week workshop). My question, which was lengthy and complex, drew parallels between the two men's work. Charlie came up afterwards and introduced himself. About two or three times a year for the next five years, Charlie would call me at the university and ask me research questions. I would give him the best answer I could from our research and then follow up by mailing him copies of research papers that backed up my answers, always with a short handwritten note.

In 1990, to introduce my first book, Full Circle, I appeared on Larry King Live one Monday night. Charlie, who had just come home from his office, flipped on the TV and there I was. He told me later that, just the week before, he and a single friend of his were sitting out on San Francisco Bay, praying together that each of them would find a longterm healthy relationship.

The Friday before my appearance on The Larry King Show, as I lit my Sabbath candles, I said a prayer along the same lines as Charlie's prayer. I looked through the two dancing flames and realized that I was alone. (Usually, my two sons who lived with me were there, but not that night.) The space between the two flames somehow let me know that this was a direct line to God.

I quickly said the rote prayers and then this came out: Okay, God. I'm ready. [Long pause] Dear God, please send me someone kind. And, someone smart. As smart as me. I was getting tired of hiding my intelligence on first and second dates. Third dates usually were a disaster because I wasn't hiding anymore!

Then I took a deep breath and I knew this next part took a lot of courage. I asked for someone I "deserve."

Working in a Psych department and spending years working on my own inner healing process made me cringe as I asked for someone I deserved. That meant something romantic, but that also meant someone who would match me in the areas that still needed to be worked on. God knows how much shadow/false self or ego I have left; I don't! But I asked for someone I deserved because... it just popped out. When Charlie sat down and watched me on Larry King Live, he realized as the show was over that he was coming up to Hartford the next weekend to speak at an ACoA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) Conference. He called me on the Wednesday after Larry King and invited me to dinner after his talk on Friday night. I sat by the phone, stunned. After we hung up I asked, sitting alone in my kitchen, "Does it work this fast?"

I had to tell Charlie I couldn't have dinner with him because I was treating a chemotherapy patient with massage and energy balancing every evening that week. I said I could meet him for lunch the next day. Friday morning, my patient called to say her Friday treatment had just been cancelled. So, I came to his talk anyway that evening. The rest is history. We dated back and forth for a year from Connecticut and Baltimore, Maryland and then we moved in together. To test this whole scary thing called "commitment," we lived together for three years and then we made the big plunge, which as I write, was over14 years ago. I would like to report that I've been Meg Ryan for the last 17 years and Charlie somewhere between Paul Newman and Jude Law.

Not so!

"Someone I deserved" has filled my life and his with many sentimental moments that we both deserve, but the honest, down-to-earth truth is that we have had no choice but to work really hard to make this "thing" work. "Smitten" and "Romance" are the first 1% of any relationship, and then the real relationship work begins. So, where is "the love of my life?" It is Charlie. But, it is Charlie in relationship to something much bigger than him... or me. Our hard work at making our relationship work, "getting down" and learning the "art" of marriage, has brought us both to an everyday understanding of who the love of our life is.

Let's back up for a few minutes to a dream I had a few weeks after our dinner in Hartford back in 1990.

Our Sacred Person
My dream took me to the first hotel suite where I sat and talked with Charlie. There was a sitting room with two sofas and a round dining table surrounded by four chairs. He and I went into this room to sit and talk, and there at the table was a little man who resembled Desmond Tutu (whom I had heard speak in 1987 and was enchanted with. Because this dream was a "lucid" dream, I felt as though I were awake and had the capacity to think during it. I thought, This is our combined negative ego/false self or our combined shadow. Charlie and I have a small amount of work to do together because this is a symbolic small man at our table [please God!]. I was grateful this man at "our" table wasn't a Sumo wrestler!

Still in the dream, Charlie took my hand and together we walked out into the hall and searched the corridor for the beginning of a tour. The halls turned into a maze that looked like we were in the clerical/office part of a factory. Finally, we saw a light on in one of the doorways and walked in. A man walked up to us as we stood at the counter and he asked if he could help. "We're here for the tour," we said.

He answered, "You're here for the Power Plant Tour."

"Yes. How do we get there?"

"Follow me. I'll show you the way." And he walked around the counter and walked out the door.

Following this man and still holding Charlie's hand, I asked him, "Charlie, is that God?" Charlie looked back at me and chuckled. I could feel Charlie's chuckle in my belly and I could see myself through his eyes.

I knew at that moment that if Charlie and I chose to be together, God/Higher Power would lead us and we would learn how this whole energy - power/empowerment plant - works. I could learn to see myself through Charlie's eyes and, of course, we would both grow because we had Desmond Tutu, aka our combined false self/shadow, waiting back in the room. In summation, in all our hard work and play, we could "develop" the love of our life, which really is Our Sacred Person that I described in the last chapter. Our hard work refining our ego/shadow striped the obstructions to being our Soul in relationship to our Higher Self and God.

What does this all mean when our heads are already filled with Hollywood's version of "The Love of Our Life?" It means that no one - no mate - can make us whole or make us feel loved. We do that for our self in relationship with our Higher Power. We "use" our relationships here in this physical reality to help us remove the obstructions to this relationship with our Self and God/Higher Power. This is "True Love." In all truth, I learned that in order to love and be loved, I have to learn/grow to love myself, otherwise I don't have the capacity to know love.

And where does this put my "romance" with Charlie? We are friends, we are partners, we are companions and the most personal part of relationship will be revealed in the Epilogue of this book called, "Eternal Circle of the Soul."

Authors note:
For the Soulful side of natural sex with "The Love of Our Life," see Whitfield B, 1995. Spiritual Awakenings Chapter 10, Spiritual Sexuality pages 129-142.

The Sacred Romance
Brent Curtis and John Eldredge wrote this beautiful explanation in their 1997 book The Sacred Romance:

The Sacred Romance calls to us every moment of our lives. It whispers to us on the wind, invites us through the laughter of good friends, reaches out to us through the touch of someone we love. We've heard it in our favorite music, sensed it at the birth of our first child, been drawn to it while watching the shimmer of a sunset on the ocean. It is even present in times of great personal suffering - the illness of a child, the loss of a marriage, the death of a friend. Something calls to us through experiences like these and rouses an inconsolable longing deep within our heart, wakening in us a yearning for intimacy, beauty, and adventure. This longing is the most powerful part of any human personality. It fuels our search for meaning, for wholeness, for a sense of being truly alive. However we may describe this deep desire, it is the most important thing about us, our heart of hearts, the passion of our life. And the voice that calls to us in this place is none other than the voice of God.

© 2009, Barbara Harris Whitfield, All Rights Reserved

To read more about Barbara's book, The Natural Soul,
click on the cover image above.

Excerpted from The Natural Soul, by Barbara Harris Whitfield, © 2009. Reprinted with permission.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Barbara Harris Whitfield is a respiratory therapist and massage therapist. She is the author of five books: 1) Full Circle: The Near-Death Experience and Beyond, 2) Spiritual Awakenings: Insights of the Near-Death Experience and Other Doorways to Our Soul, 3) Final Passage: Sharing the Journey as This Life Ends, 4) The Power of Humility: Choosing Peace over Conflict in Relationships (co-authored) and 5) The Natural Soul.

Barbara was research assistant to psychiatry professor Bruce Greyson at the University of Connecticut Medical School, studying the spiritual, psychological, physical and energetic after effects of the Near-Death Experience. She is past chair and member of the board of the Kundalini Research Network and has sat on the executive board of the International Association for Near-Death Studies (I.A.N.D.S.) She is a consulting editor and contributor for the Journal of Near-Death Studies. She was on the faculty of Rutgers University's Institute for Alcohol and Drug Studies for 12 years teaching courses on the after effects of Spiritual Awakenings. She is a faculty member of the Center for Sacred Studies where she co-teaches a course with Charles Whitfield on Unity in Practice.

Barbara was a key subject in Kenneth Ring's groundbreaking book on the Near-Death Experience, Heading Toward Omega. He writes about her again in his latest book Lessons From the Light.

Barbara lives in Atlanta, Georgia with her husband, author and physician Charles Whitfield. They share a private practice where they provide individual and group psychotherapy for trauma survivors, people with addictions and other problems in living, and spiritual seekers.

For more information, see www.cbwhit.com and www.barbarawhitfield.com.