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
There's a certain je ne sais quoi that Americans have in spades - a we-can-do-anything spirit that makes so many things possible for all of us. We're rugged individualists, aspirational in nature, and we like to think for ourselves.
The Project Angel Food Program's mission is to nourish the body and spirit of men, women and children affected by HIV/AIDS and other serious illness. The Project Angel Food Program delivers free and nutritious meals prepared with love. We act out of a sense of urgency because hunger and illness cannot wait.
Over the years, many people on a spiritual journey have asked me why I keep going on about politics, and many people involved in politics have asked me why I keep going on about spirituality.
Ironically, it is when we identify with our spirits rather than our bodies that we are most powerful on the material plane. Our overidentification with the world does not give us power within the world so much as it diminishes our power here. It makes us frightened and nervous and full of anxiety.
We already have the material means to eradicate deep poverty and thereby eradicate hunger. We have the material means to begin the tremendous clean up of the environmental messes we've created. We have, I believe, the psychological, emotional and spiritual means to create a world without war. We have the material means to create a world in which unnecessary human suffering has been drastically diminished. My vision for the future is that we do those things. And I think we will.
In pursuing personal growth, there are issues where we can advance just so far by ourselves. At some point, our continued progress and improvement can only come about through relationships with others. Romantic love is an intense and intimate exposure to another person; if we can be who we want to be, even in that context, then our spiritual growth is exponentially expanded.
I write and speak about personal and spiritual growth. One week I write about illness and another week I speak about relationships and another week I write about work and money and another week I speak to people with obesity issues. I write about whatever wounds seem to cry out for more enlightened solutions, and the love that heals them all.
We need to take responsibility for the effect of our environment on our nervous systems, and particularly the nervous systems of our children. No wonder so many of them are diagnosed with all the stuff they're diagnosed with today. Modern technology is a blessing to be sure, but it's also a curse if we allow it to pull us out of our spiritual center. A 24 hour electronic onslaught comes at the expense of our deep humanity and our deepest relationships.
A primary goal of the spiritual life is to learn to quiet the mind through prayer and meditation, through spiritual practice, so that we can hear what in both Judaism and Christianity, is called the small, still voice within.
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.
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.
No matter what I write or speak about, it always has some connection to how our spiritual understanding impacts the world we live in. Whether I'm writing or teaching about nutrition, pilates, green living or meditation, all topics simmer down to self thought and intention.
I am very much into politics, but what interests me is sacred principles applied to that area. I am interested in the intersection of the Spiritual and the political - how spiritual principles apply to the social and political issues of our day. For me, the spiritual realm, is a more powerful place to speak from on those issues.
Choosing joy involves spiritual surrender, and sometimes we would rather hold on to the pain than surrender our egos.