Preface to The Marriage of Spirit - Enlightened Living in Today's World

Softer than the flower where kindness is concerned;
and stronger than the thunder where principles are at stake.
~Paramahansa Yogananda

When Leslie asked me to help her write The Marriage of Spirit, I was deeply honored. I feel very privileged and excited to assist in bringing forward these amazingly simple, powerful, and life-changing principles and techniques. Having worked with them for over ten years, using them myself and teaching them to others in workshops, I have watched them help to illuminate, balance, and transform the lives of thousands of people~including my own~very quickly.

The Marriage of Spirit principles and techniques serve a wide spectrum of purposes: from helping people move beyond apparent limitations; to healing past mental, emotional, and physical traumas; to achieving success and excellence in the material world; to assisting with spiritual growth. They help us transcend the swinging pendulum of consciousness~seemingly uncontrollable patterns of feeling off-balance and trapped in cycles of negativity, anger, pain, and fear which prevent us from living a fulfilled life.

For example, people use the techniques in a concrete and practical way to manifest more fulfilling relationships and careers, to reach higher creative potentials, and to create more abundance and happiness in their lives. Spiritually, the Marriage of Spirit assists us in living in a paradigm of higher consciousness, more in a flow of love, truth, joy, wisdom, compassion and true connectedness to all things. It becomes possible to bring the soul's full expression into the world, to know more of who we truly are, to touch the Divine.

Based on the metaphysical principle of the unity of all things, the roots of the Marriage of Spirit teachings are at least as ancient as recorded history. These specific teachings resonate with the core of all major truth teachings, traditions, and religions~such as Buddhism; Hinduism; Christian, Jewish and Islamic mysticism; Taoism; Tantra; and the ancient Egyptian mystery schools, just to name some of the more familiar.

Formerly shrouded in mystery and reserved for the select few who dedicated their lives to isolation and monastic discipline, the ancient wisdom teachings have been revamped and made simple and practical for the modern world. As the evolution of human consciousness accelerates, many are finding that the old methods of achieving spiritual awakening are inadequate for life in the modern, fast-paced, material world. New tools, like the Marriage of Spirit techniques, are being brought forward now to help us.

The Marriage of Spirit also bridges the ancient metaphysical principles and modern psychology, as much of the teachings are about actively bringing balance into our lives by clearing the ego, or releasing inner limitations. The distinction between the Marriage of Spirit and modern psychology, however, is that the Marriage of Spirit relies not only on our untying the knots of the mind, but also on the gift of grace~on giving-up the whole lesson to spirit's mysterious healing power in order to effect transformation in our lives.

Another important distinction is that the purpose of the Marriage of Spirit techniques is not about rearranging the ego into a more congenial, healthier form~as modern psychology can be. Rather, their purpose is to transform and to clear the ego so that the clear light of reality shines through it and so that we can live a truer expression of our own inherent divine nature. As Ram Dass once said, the ego is a prison, and so in order to know the truth of our spiritual nature, we are not concerned with rearranging the furniture inside the prison, but with breaking down the prison walls to let in the light that is always present. The Marriage of Spirit brings down the walls of our own inner limitations by making the unconscious conscious, by bringing the shadow into light, and by marrying spirit with matter. It is a course in awakening, in becoming conscious of the luminous core of enlightenment that is within each one of us.

Leslie's own magical story of awakening is unique and inspiring. Chapter One gives us a brief glimpse of her journey as a Western woman embracing the life of a mystic. She shares how she was taught the Marriage of Spirit principles by spiritual guides (both inner and outer), the insights and awakenings that this led to, and how it eventually culminated for her in the late 1980s in the full realization of the Self.

It was my good fortune to meet Leslie in 1990, during a time of intense soul-searching. She is the wisest, most compassionate and illumined soul it has ever been my pleasure to know. Her life, an embodiment of humility, generosity, grace, and unconditional love, is fully dedicated to the service of God and humanity. My respect for her continues to deepen over the years as I am graced daily with her living example of purity, heart, trust in the Divine, and unshakable dedication to truth.

It is a blessing beyond words for me to be able to participate in the creation of this book, and I am so very grateful for the miraculous transformations and soul-stirring awakenings that have come to me throughout the process of writing and working with Leslie. My role here has been to help compile this book from Leslie's writings and transcripts of her talks, and by summarizing our conversations over the years about key concepts.

With love and respect, I present this aspect of Leslie's life's work~a modern version of ancient spiritual and metaphysical truths~to people who are truly hungry for nourishment, fulfillment and spiritual awakening in the busy, technological, modern world. May every reader receive as much from this book as I have.

~ Brad Laughlin
January 15, 2000, Santa Fe, New Mexico