Relationships – not only our marital ones but all our essential ones – are in turmoil. Our relationship to our children, our parents, our friends, our society, the relationship between societies and nations, our political and legal relationships, our economic ties, our relationship to our earth home and to our Creative Source have all changed and humanity is scrambling to find its new ground.

Most of us are experiencing these massive shifts as painful and confusing, but the Bahá’í writings, which have anticipated this dislocation in human affairs, make it clear that these changes are necessary and are the birthing pains for the establishment of a new reality. We are making the great shift from our collective adolescence into the coming of age of the human race.

If we fail to realize that the requirements of marriage have also expanded, we will fall into the marital malaise that has seized most couples on the planet. Marriage can be either a nightmare or a source of joy and enrichment – the former if we continue our old patterns; the latter insofar as we can awaken to, and move beyond, the unconscious patterns to which most of us are still subservient.

The authors believe that marriage can now fulfil its highest potential and become an unprecedented source of well-being. We are now in a position to access a new level of consciousness and integrate the new principles which are the very ‘spirit of this age’.

So what does a ‘mindful marriage’ look like? The new reality of marriage in this time of transition is a central theme of this book.