Marianne Williamson
Marianne Williamson
Marianne Deborah Williamson is an American spiritual teacher, author and lecturer. She has published eleven books, including four New York Times number one bestsellers. She is the founder of Project Angel Food, a meals-on-wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area, and the co-founder of The Peace Alliance, a grassroots campaign supporting legislation to establish a United States Department of Peace. She serves on the Board of Directors of the RESULTS organization, which works to...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionSelf-Help Author
Date of Birth8 July 1952
CityHouston, TX
CountryUnited States of America
Even though modern life in many ways is nothing short of exhausting, we need to take responsibility for what is necessary to combat the stress and exhaustion of modern life.
So many of us have not attended to the deeper issues in ourselves; in our minds, our hearts, and in our external manifestations that keep love at bay. We instead concentrate on making a list of what we're looking for in another person.
We arrogantly assume that the nervous system doesn't really need to be coaxed into romance. That romance comes from some other place.
I find being a mother harder than I though it was going to be. That is a tremendous revelation for me personally. Much more time, more care, more attention and more effort needs to be spent on care for the children. That will save the world at large.
It's tempting to think that decisions that are not life-and-death are therefore unimportant, and that the little compromises we make don't matter to our bottom line or our spiritual selves. How many of us are tempted, in business, to make a less-than-ethical decision? To appropriate someone else's idea or fudge some numbers? We have to remember that maintaining our ethical and spiritual selves is absolutely linked with achieving the degree of success we're working toward.
The part of the brain that is watching the television and is on the computer at the same time, preparing to jump onto the treadmill for 15 minutes, might be able to lead into sex, but it would be hard put to lead us to romance, or to real authentic human connection.
The world as it is perceived by most people, is a world of finite resources.
Forgiving ourselves for all the woulda-shoulda-couldas in life, and sometimes forgiving others for actions that we feel undercut or undermine our good, can be very challenging. But forgiveness of the past and mistakes, our own mistakes as well as the mistakes of others, is imperative if we are to dwell fully in the present and experience the miracles that are only available to the forgiving and loving mind.
If we come to see that this world does not have the final word, then we open our mind and therefore our entire lives to experience the possibility of infinite possibilities.
What is happening in politics today is a similar process to what happened in the medical world a few decades ago: realizing that there's more to healing than just addressing symptoms. Primary paradigm when it comes to dealing with political and social disease is allopathic: Pass a law, lock someone up, engage in warfare. And the state of the world today makes it clear that such allopathic measures have not exactly brought peace to all.
I don't think making love the new bottom line is naïve; I believe that thinking we can survive the next hundred years doing anything less, is naïve.
I can't say that there are "things" that make me come alive. There are thoughts that make me come alive. Those are thoughts that take me beyond myself; that remind me that there's a bigger game going on on this planet than simply my own existence; that love works miracles, and how much we need them at certain moment.
If you are not grieving, you are not conscious. But if you are not rejoicing in the possibilities of how this could all change, then you are not looking through the filter of the greatest spiritual perspicacity.
Our hearts are being stretched to span the violence and the suffering in our lives and world, and at the same time we are also witness to so much magnificence and brilliance. We are a species that has produced nuclear weapons, and also one that has developed profound insight into the nature of life itself.