Marianne Williamson (quotes)

Bless more; blame less.
Our deepest need is to be seen.
Every judgement blocks the light!
Fear is trusting in your own power.
God is definitely out of the closet.
The soul is the truth of who we are.
Daily life is the enemy of greatness.
Every relationship is a gift exchange.
What you do comes from what you think.
I know. And that’s what took me so long
Living meaningfully is what brings joy.
God heard us. He sent help. He sent you.
Love brings up everything unlike itself.
There cannot be too many glorious women.
You’ve committed no sins, just mistakes.
In every nation, there are wounds to heal.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
Angry people cannot create a peaceful planet
God is the electricity and we are the lamps.
In every heart, there is the power to do it.
Spiritual progress is like a detoxification.
In every community, there is work to be done.
we can’t separate ourselves from one another.
Behind every fear, there is a miracle waiting.
Gratitude is an opener of locked-up blessings.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Don’t think small and expect to have a big life.
The key to happiness is the decision to be happy
The miracle often lies outside our comfort zone.
Consider the possibility of infinite possibility.
.. a group experience of love and support.
Surrender doesn’t obstruct power; it enhances it.
The universe takes us as seriously as we take it.
The world is healed one loving thought at a time.
When we are centered in joy, we attain our wisdom.
Go for greatness. Anything else is a waste of time.
Hope is born of participation in hopeful solutions.
The deepest feelings always show itself in silence.
There can be no darkness where I provide the light.
The world loves us when we choose to love the world.
A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn.
We resist Joy on this planet more than we resist war.
No one is any more or any less important than you are.
May my heart be your shelter, and my arms be your home.
We will make love an art and we will love like artists.
Every change is a challenge to become who we really are.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.
Only what I am not giving can be lacking in any situation.
Your life shows up for you when you show up for your life.
Everything we do is either an act of love or a cry for help.
Only what I’m not giving is what is lacking in any situation
The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.
Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here.
Relationship are part of the vast plan for our enlightenment.
We shouldn’t use our own upset as an excuse for not helping.
Be the most wonderful expression of you that you’re capable of.
Enlightenment is the only real antidote to the world’s despair.
Nobody wants to die feeling that they have not sung their song.
The only feelings you really need to fear are those you ignore.
Every decision you make reflects your evaluation of who you are.
Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it.
Never think you can separate who you are from what you’re doing.
Part of forgiving people is releasing them from our own agendas.
Some things need to be let go before other things can be let in.
The world won’t step into its greatness until we step into ours.
As long as there are ways we can serve, then we have a job to do.
Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.
In the absence of love, we began slowly but surely to fall apart.
Let go of your story so the Universe can write a new one for you.
With every thought we think, we either summon or block a miracle.
If a train doesn’t stop at your station, then it’s not your train.
If a train doesn’t stop at your station, then it’s not your train.
If you know what changes a heart, you know what changes the world.
Prayer enables us to transform the world because it transforms us.
Our key to transforming anything lies in our ability to reframe it.
The level of violence on the planet today is no longer sustainable.
We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
If you’re busy regretting the past, then a new future can’t come in.
Love will not just heal your life or mine. Love will heal the world.
Romance is one of the sacred temples that dot the landscape of life.
The world is terrified of joyful women. Make a stand. Be one anyway.
Attack thoughts towards others are attack thoughts towards ourselves.
The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins
The universe is not only self-organizing, it is also self-correcting.
We must be proactive in our love in order for it to change our lives.
It is our own thoughts that hold the key to miraculous transformation.
I can’t say what most people are doing. I can only say what I am doing.
The cosmic spotlight isn’t pointed at you; it radiates from within you.
The love is real in any situation; everything else is just an illusion.
There will be no peace in the world until there is peace in our hearts.
Use each interaction to be the best, most powerful version of yourself.
Every act of kindness on your part is a boost to your own immune system.
I am a glorious child of God. I am joyful, serene, positive, and loving.
Love is about letting go of the fears that stand in front of our hearts.
The more you drop into your heart, the more God can drop into your mind.
The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best which is within us.
Who we are, not just the services and products we provide, creates money.
Your playing small does not serve the world. Who are you not to be great?
I deepen my experience of God through prayer, meditation, and forgiveness.
The thinking of the world leads us to think shallowly and act too quickly.
You must master a new way to think, before you can master a new way to be.
As you get older, life gets harder if you’re not applying spiritual truths.
The entire world would feel the vibration if America returned to its heart.
The only thing missing in any situation is that in which you are not giving.
The opportunities for infinite possibility exist no matter what age we are.
The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and the acceptance of love.
The universe is conspiring at this moment to bring you happiness and peace.
Every time we open our hearts, we create the space for a global alternative.
Next time you’re about to judge someone, attempt to understand them instead.
No matter how sad we might be, the universe is still planning our happiness.
No matter what the problem, a miracle can solve it. Remember to ask for one.
The holy child is waiting to be born in every instant, not just once a year.
The more we allow ourselves to enjoy, the more reasons we find to be joyful.
The Real You isn’t damaged goods. The Real You is the light of the universe.
Your future isn’t programmed by your past; it’s programmed by your thoughts.
Birth is violent, whether it be the birth of a child or the birth of an idea.
Life is like a book that never ends. Chapters close, but not the book itself.
Nothing liberates our greatness like the desire to help, the desire to serve.
The Universe is either expressing a miracle or is pregnant with the next one.
What we give, we will receive, and what we withhold will be withheld from us.
I don’t think that anyone can age in a conscious way and not experience grief.
The key to abundance is meeting limited circumstances with unlimited thoughts.
Thought that is no longer limited, brings experience that is no longer limited
If I choose to bless another person, I will always end up feeling more blessed.
The challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul’s growth.
Anytime you try to be a loving person, you’re doing your part to save the world.
Forgiveness is the ultimate preventive medicine, as well as the greatest healer.
Miracles begin when we consider the possibility that there might be another way.
It doesn’t take money to turn off the television and cultivate real bonding time.
The solution to low self-esteem is to get over yourself and get a higher purpose.
You don’t need a new life, just a new lens through which to view the one you have.
I really got into Osho’s books. I have always loved his books. They were top notch.
Love is a hero’s journey, and the hero’s journey is a noble but difficult path.
Again–nothing you do or think or wish or make is necessary to establish your worth.
Gender or skin color does not of itself determine the nature of a person’s thinking.
Imagine a temple inside your mind, a haven from the chaos of the world. Visit often.
Inner peace doesn’t come from getting what we want, but from remembering who we are.
Silence is the Sabbath of the soul. Therein we rest, and therein we hear everything.
The point of life is not who falls down. The point is who gets up and how you do it.
What emerges from the silence is the deafening sound of an old world disintegrating.
Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again.
“Sometimes when we don’t know the answer,

it’s time to simply be with the question.”
We do not heal the past by dwelling there. We heal the past by living in the present.
The fact is, there are Fortune 500 companies that have been founded during recessions.
The only way to end a culture of violence is to proactively create a culture of peace.
Whatever we put out, it’s coming back to us. The universe keeps a perfect set of books.
You can live your life out of a circumstance or you can live your life out of a vision.
Environmentally, the planet will not sustain the kind of abuse it receives at our hands.
In our ability to think about something differently lies the power to make it different.
Nature is infinitely creative. It is always producing the possibility of new beginnings.
These are very serious times, and serious people need to be doing some serious thinking.
We are dominated on this planet by a fear-based rather than a love-based thought system.
When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again.
If your eyes were open to all the beauty in the world, you would be overwhelmed with joy.
We lack faith in *what* exists within us because we lack faith in *Who* exists within us.
Where there is lack, God’s abundance is on the way. Hold on. Have faith. It’s coming.
Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.
The bottom line in love is not whether someone loves you, but whether someone chooses you.
The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.
The wise person doesn’t ask, “What have I achieved?” but rather, “What have I contributed?”
When an idea reaches critical mass there is no stopping the shift its presence will induce.
In any moment, in any circumstance, a miracle will occur when we align ourselves with truth.
Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth.
The one good thing about failure is that it makes you consider doing things a different way.
Think bigger. Forget limits. Embrace the idea of endless possibility…. It will change you.
We are here to repair the world. I grew up thinking that was what everybody was trying to do.
When the wisdom of the heart replaces the chatter of the mind, The power of Love flows forth.
Behind every dark cloud there is an every-shining sun. Just wait. In time, the cloud will pass.
Prepare for the new; expect the new; embrace the new. Otherwise, you’ll just repeat what’s old.
The issue of spiritual power is to meet the limited mortal circumstance with unlimited thought.
The only way the past can drag you back is if you choose to bring it with you into the present.
When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.
When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.
Everything connects to everything; therefore, as we change, the world cannot but change with us.
I believe that the truth with a capital T is at the center of all the great religious teachings.
I think daily life is where the lessons come in – that’s where the tests and the growth come in.
If you want to end darkness you cannot beat it with a baseball bat, you have to turn on a light.
It is not too late. You are not too old. You are right on time-And you are better than you know.
The role of a leader is not to rule over other people, but to hold a space for their own genius.
The U.S. incarcerates more of its people than any nation in the world, or any nation in history.
Cynicism is easy; anyone can sneer and jeer. Hope is born of participating in hopeful solutions.
Imagine the most outrageously positive possibility for your life, claim it, and consider it done.
Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.
The purpose of daily prayer is the cultivation of a sense of the sacred. Sacred energy renews us.
Think of the most amazing thing you could possibly do with your life. Then say out loud, ‘YES.’
Our problem is not that we don’t have power, so much as that we tend to not use the power we have.
We shouldn’t come up with a pseudo-spiritual excuse for turning away from the pain of the world.
If we never take a risk, we’ll never know the parts of ourselves that would have emerged if we had.
A change of heart leads to change in behavior, and a change in behavior leads to changing the world.
Charisma is a sparkle in people that money can’t buy. It’s an invisible energy with visible effects.
Midlife is not the time to disenchant ourselves. It’s a time to turn on all our magic in full force.
No company or organization filled with unhappy people will ultimately rise to its highest potential.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.
Whether we love, or close our hearts to love, is a mental choice we make, every moment of every day.
Great people are not people who have never fallen down. Greatness has to do with how you get back up.
In every heart there is an inner room, where we can hold our greatest treasures and our deepest pain.
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. When you choose to love, you choose to work miracles.
If you give your life as a wholehearted response to love, then love will wholeheartedly respond to you.
Just like a sunbeam can’t separate itself from the sun, and a wave can’t separate itself from the ocean,
We don’t reach the light through endless analysis of the dark. We reach the light by choosing the light.
Do what you love. Do what makes your heart sing. And NEVER do it for the money, Go to work to spread joy.
People who hate often do so with great conviction. What we need are more people who love with conviction.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
My hope is that I’m getting better and wiser. With every book, I have more of myself to pour onto the page.
People hear you on the level you speak to them from. Speak from your heart, and they will hear with theirs.
To the ego mind, surrender means giving up. To the spiritual mind, surrender means giving in and receiving.
Children are happy because they don’t have a file in their minds called “All the Things That Could Go Wrong.
I’m better than I used to be. Better than I was yesterday. But hopefully not as good as I’ll be tomorrow.
In the Jewish religion it says – in the time of deepest darkest night act as if the morning has already come
The choice to be used as an instrument of love, right here, right now, is a choice for personal empowerment.
The last thing we should do is allow ourselves to be infantilized by a counterfeit version of enlightenment.
We don’t need to fight the forces of chaos so much as we need to restore and revitalize the forces of peace.
Once you reach a certain age, you’re either slowly dying or slowly being reborn. I want to choose the latter.
The meaningful question is never what we did yesterday, but what we have learned from it and are doing today.
I think those of us on a spiritual journey can help create a new conversation, a new America, and a new world.
People tend to have a government that reflects the level of consciousness of the majority of people who voted.
The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one two things: either love, or a call for love.
The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one two things: either love, or a call for love.
Real intimacy; real love has to do with a joining of the mind, a joining of the spirit, a joining of the heart.
Withholding love is a form of self-sabotage, as what we withhold from others we are withholding from ourselves.
Always be open to new beginnings. To the universe, every moment is the start of the next big thing in your life.
No matter what is happening now, events will ultimately bend toward love the way a flower bends toward sunlight.
We are not here to fix, change or belittle another person. We are here to support, forgive and heal one another.
Joy is our goal, our destiny. We cannot know who we are except in joy. Not knowing joy, we do not know ourselves.
We need more than a new politics; what we need is a new worldview. We need a fundamentally different bottom line.
We tend to have tremendous faith in the power of our disasters and far too little faith in the power of miracles.
Whatever worked in the past, build on it; whatever didn’t work in the past, break the chain that binds you to it.
[God is] an all-encompassing love that is the source of all, the reality of all, and the being through which I am.
Envision possibility. Don’t worry who else believes in it; the universe is only looking for instructions from you.
Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and ablities were used in a way that served others.
We don’t ask God for too much; in fact, we ask for too little. Turn to Him for everything. Give everything to God.
We want spiritual principles to be more than beautiful abstractions; we want them to actually transform our lives.
You don’t want to try to protect yourself from the pain of a crisis. You want to learn everything you can from it.
…available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.
Enlightenment is the key to everything, and it is the key to intimacy, because it is the goal of true authenticity.
Every thought creates form on some level and all that our physical experience is – is a reflection of our thoughts.
Forgiving the past means remembering the love there, and releasing all the rest as the illusion that it really was.
We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.
But beauty itself is not given to us by anyone; it is a power we have within us from the gate, a radiance inside us.
Choosing joy involves spiritual surrender, and sometimes we would rather hold on to the pain than surrender our egos.
Every relationship, every situation is part of a divinely created and highly specific curriculum for your soul growth
I don’t think pain is a prerequisite for growth, but on the other hand, most of us choose very painful ways to learn.
I think that’s what we all want on this earth – to feel that at some level we have connected with other human beings.
Love is who we are, and when we deviate from that love we’re deviating from our ultimate, essential, eternal reality.
You get to decide what energy you choose to download in any moment. No one but you gets to decide who you wish to be.
God isn’t a noun but a process…a continual, infinitely creative outpouring of love and light onto all living things.
Painful experiences are not meant to linger. They are meant to teach us what they need to teach us, and then dissolve.
We are living at an extraordinary time in human history. And for many of us things are great. Things are great for me.
Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don’t yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving.
Motherly love – putting the care of children before every other consideration – is the ultimate intelligence of nature.
The only work that will ultimately bring any good to any of us is the work of contributing to the healing of the world.
We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
I have lived enough to know great things will unfold for me externally only if I allow them to unfold for me internally.
The world as we know it is falling apart at the seams, because it’s an inadequate container for the truth of who we are.
God exists in eternity. The only point where eternity meets time is in the present. The present is the only time there is.
Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.
Self-awareness is not self-centeredness, and spirituality is not narcissism. ‘Know thyself’ is not a narcissistic pursuit.
Spend the next few days preparing for the year ahead: Forgive everyone, let go of everything, let God take charge.
The goal of spiritual practice is full recovery, and the only thing you need to recover from is a fractured sense of self.
The key to intimacy is the commitment to honesty and to the radical forgiveness necessary in order for honesty to be safe.
The week ahead is already programmed for fabulousness. Pray that your thinking be aligned with the force that makes it so.
We experience who we really are, and what it is we are meant to do, in any moment when we pour our love into the universe.
I feel that the social revolution of the sixties is like a revolving door that came our way, and then left. It’s back again.
The real transformation of the world comes not from what we are doing but from the consciousness from which we are doing it.
For every person who might reject you if you live your truth, there are ten others who will embrace you and welcome you home.
The more room you give yourself to express your true thoughts and feelings, the more room there is for your wisdom to emerge.
When a woman gives birth, two are born: a baby from the womb of its mother and a woman from the womb of her former existence.
Great spiritual teachings do not change, but we do. As we grow older and wiser, we can receive the teachings at deeper levels.
If you went to live in the Himalayas and everyone was lovely there, I’m sure it would be fairly easy to be a spiritual master.
Love is a wave flowing in the direction of bliss for all living things. It will carry you if you allow it to flow through you.
You get to the point where you realize that unless you, yourself, become more of the change, you can’t create too much change.
Become more accepting. With every interaction, surrender any tendency to judge another person. Pray for a more accepting heart.
Dear God, Please send to me the spirit of Your peace. Then send, dear Lord, the spirit of peace from me to all the world. Amen.
Our past is a story existing only in our minds. Look, analyze, understand, and forgive. Then, as quickly as possible, chuck it.
Speak from your mind and people will hear you with their mind. Speak from your heart and people will hear you with their heart.
We can always choose to perceive things differently. We can focus on what’s wrong in our life, or we can focus on what’s right.
Once we reach a certain age, we tend to recalibrate our expectations. We expect less from the world once we’ve seen it up close.
The spiritual path – is simply the journey of living our lives. Everyone is on a spiritual path; most people just don’t know it.
Don’t be concerned that things appear to be falling apart: this has to happen in order for something new and wonderful to emerge.
Forgiveness is the key to inner peace because it is the mental technique by which our thoughts are transformed from fear to love.
I think every writer lives for the thought that there will be a moment when somebody reads something on the page and says, “Yes!”
Miracles arise from conviction. Be convicted about these things: Miracles can happen. Miracles do happen. Love makes them happen.
The spiritual journey has to do with learning to think more deeply and take as long a time as we need. That’s the path to wisdom.
Your life has purpose as long as you dedicate it to love. It’s not what we do but who we are that forms our biggest contribution.
Anyone who is speaking of a greater compassion, a greater humanitarian concern, is a leader paving the path we all need to follow.
Thought is cause: experience is effect. If you don’t like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.
Conviction is a force multiplier. If you want something, claim it in your gut. The universe itself responds to your inner certainty.
If you think humanity can get itself out of all this mess without divine help, then you’re not being hopeful – you’re hallucinating.
Once the light of our awareness is cast on any darkness, then it cannot hide and it cannot remain. Such is the law of consciousness.
The worlds of Truth (love) and illusion (fear) are like parallel universes; with every thought we make a choice which one to inhabit
There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.
There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.
Given how deeply the ways of war have penetrated our collective consciousness, it will take spiritual power to turn the issue around.
In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.
The universe is already programmed to give each of us a year of happiness. Our challenge lies in programming ourselves to receive it.
Love and fear represent two different lenses through which to view the world. Which I choose to use will determine what I think I see.
You are emerging from the cocoon of your former self. There are no limits to the extent of the transformation that’s possible for you.
Every problem emerges from the false belief we are separate from one another, and every answer emerges from the realization we are not.
On any given day, in any given moment, something could happen that opens up for you an entirely new path. Be still, be alert, be ready.
Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which He brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth.
Sobriety itself is today’s high, for it is ultimately in the most centered consciousness that we find our power to transcend the world.
The voices of fear are so loud today. The voices of love should never shout, but neither should they whisper – not at a time like this.
Today is a day for sober and mature reflection, not glee. Mindless celebration is both spiritually inappropriate and politically naive.
Ego says, “Once everything falls into place, I’ll feel peace”. Spirit says, “Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place”.
I believe that ultimately it all comes down to whether we seek conscious contact with God on a daily basis through prayer and meditation.
Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.
We need to shift from an economic to a humanitarian organizing principle for human civilization. And women, en masse, should be saying so.
Children are one of the greatest lessons in happiness, constantly challenging us to enjoy the moment, as the next one will not be the same.
The greatest force of personal liberation is the decision to widen our circle of compassion, moving from focus on self to focus on service.
There is an emergent enlightenment appearing today, unique to no particular culture or ethnicity. Anyone who chooses to be, is its conduit.
Whatever situation you’re in: Send love, place it in God’s hands, open your heart to everyone involved – and it will turn out miraculously.
You can live constrained within the confines of a solely material perspective, or choose instead the infinite field of quantum possibility.
Love is not neutral. It takes a stand. It is a commitment to the attainment of the conditions of peace for everyone involved in a situation.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.
Imagine the week ahead unfolding in an ever-increasing flow of miracles. Allow the image to sink into your heart. Receive it with a big yes!
Often miracles are happening right in front of our eyes, but we think they should look different, so we miss them though they’re right there.
We cannot get to our knowledge because the world is too loud. And we tend to make it louder as we cry out in pain, pretending we are singing.
Every bird that sings, sings for you. Every breeze that blows, blows for you. Every sunray shines for you. If you only knew how loved you are.
We need to change society’s ordering principle from economic to humanitarian values, from money as the bottom line to love as the bottom line.
Fill you mind with the meaningless stimuli of a world preoccupied with meaningless things, and it will not be easy to feel peace in your heart.
Taking the time to meditate is as important as taking the time to breathe. One pumps oxygen into the body, the other pumps peace into the mind.
A person acting from a motivation of contribution and service rises to such a level of moral authority that worldly success is a natural result.
As we give, so shall we receive. Service does not mean self-sacrifice. It means giving the needs of another person the same priority as our own.
Magic happens when you tell the universe what you want it to do for you; miracles happen when you ask how you can be of service to the universe.
The love that saves us is not a love that might come to us in the future, but rather the love we can give to whomever is around us right now.
The universe is intentional. It is always moving in the direction of greater love, regardless whether or not we consciously align with that love.
What I think about you, I will not be able to escape thinking about myself, and what I do to you, I will not be able to escape experiencing myself.
The biggest problem is our lack of “response-ability.” That’s what happens when money rather than love is the bottom line. People act like idiots.
Love, when it is a sacred quest, is a space of resurrection and repair. It does more than help us survive a soulless world; it helps us to transform.
There is no greater gift to future generations than that we do the work God has asked us to do: love one another, that the world might be made right.
I don’t think making love the new bottom line is na√Øve; I believe that thinking we can survive the next hundred years doing anything less, is na√Øve.
As you get older, you have more and more layers of experience to forgive, more layers of heartbreak, more layers of what you might think of as failure.
Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of Heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.
Until we have seen someone’s darkness, we don’t really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone’s darkness, we don’t really know what love is.
We must seek to be intellectually inclusive, just as we seek to be culturally inclusive. Ideas come and go – that’s what makes a free society so vital.
Depression might have chosen you, but you don’t have to choose it back. Sometimes happiness comes with bootstraps, but so what? Pull ’em up. Choose joy.
I think we all need to be looking to the better angels of our own selves. We don’t need to be looking for great people so much as becoming great people.
In our natural state, we are glorious beings. In the world of illusion, we are lost and imprisoned, slaves to our appetites and our will to false power.
Liberation also means that even though I’m a woman I have masculine parts of my temperament which I can safely explore and integrate into my experience.
Love isn’t material. It’s energy… We experience it as kindness, giving, mercy, compassion, peace, joy, acceptance, non-judgment, joining and intimacy.
Sometimes what we deem a failure at the time it happens actually serves to foster a change within us that creates an even greater success down the road.
A Course in Miracles tells us that although ‘we think that without the ego, all would be chaos, the opposite is true. Without the ego, all would be love.’
You don’t have to pray to attract great things, because great things are attracted to you already. Pray that you won’t throw them away once they get here.
Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don’t see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself.
I think the violence in the world right now is being reflected inside people. And I also believe the violence inside people is being reflected in the world.
I’m not a doom-and-gloom person. But I think there is a difference between transcendence and denial, and much of the Western world is in major denial today.
Carrying the past in to the present, we program the future to continue the past. Letting go the past in the present, we free the future to be something else.
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. The real miracle is the love that inspires them. In this sense everything that comes from love is a miracle.
To be a princess is to play at life. To be a queen is to be a serious player…The purpose of life as a woman is to ascend to the throne and rule with heart.
To be a princess is to play at life. To be a queen is to be a serious player…The purpose of life as a woman is to ascend to the throne and rule with heart.
Yes, women are homemakers – and the entire earth is our home. Yes, we are here to take care of the children – and every child in the world is one of our own.
A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love-from a belief in what is not real, to faith in that which is. That shift in perception changes everything.
Dear God, I give this time of quiet to You. Please dissolve my thoughts of stress and fear And deliver me to the inner place Where all is peace and love. Amen.
Let’s forgive the past and who we were then. Let’s embrace the present and who we’re capable of becoming. Let’s surrender the future and watch miracles unfold.
There is within each of us the possibility of magnificence. Every moment is an opportunity to make it manifest. Let the spirit awaken you to a miraculous life.
Think of your work life therefore, not as separate from your spiritual life but as central to your spiritual life. Whatever your business, it is your ministry.
When a woman falls in love with the magnificent possibilities within herself, the forces that would limit those possibilities hold less and less sway over her.
Darkness is merely the absence of light, and fear is merely the absence of love. If we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love.
It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.
There is a point at which we begin to receive a diminishing return on the accumulation of sacred knowledge unless we use it to at least try to improve the world.
Desperately seeking something is not what attracts it to us. When we dwell, in deep peace and kindness, whatever would add to our happiness just flows to our door.
Higher thought forms trump lower ones. In the presence of a high frequency of human consciousness, all lower thought forms ultimately drop of their own dead weight.
Your character defects are not where you’re bad, but where you’re wounded. But no matter who or what causes the wound, it’s yours now and you’re responsible for it.
Gandhi said the end is inherent in the means, which means you cannot create any more peace than you yourself have attained. An angry generation will not bring peace.
No conventional therapy can release us from a deep and abiding psychic pain. Through prayer we find what we cannot find elsewhere: a peace that is not of this world.
We tend to lack humility toward love, to patronize it rather than bow before it, to put mundane considerations before the emotional need to hold someone in our arms.
Once you’ve had enough and you can’t do it anymore, you consider the possibility that there might be a better way. That’s when your head cracks open and God comes in.
We were all born carrying a promise — a promise to make the world better — and there’s a yearning to make good on that promise that none of us can suppress forever.
Whomever it is you were born to be, whatever your soul was coded to accomplish, whatever lessons you were born to learn, now is the time to get serious and get going.
People who are meditating every day and involved in a serious spiritual practice don’t usually wake up in the morning and want to rush out to eat a bunch of junk food.
I tell my mother I went to God in spite of my religious education. I feel that my religious education was inadequate, but that doesn’t mean that Judaism was inadequate.
The past doesn’t determine your future unless you carry it with you into the present. Forgiving yourself and others, you free the universe to begin again at any moment.
Beauty is an internal light, a spiritual radiance that all women have, but most women hide – unconsciously denying its existence. What we do not claim, remains invisible.
Our triumph over sorrow is not that we can avoid it but that we can endure it. And therein lies our hope; that in spirit we might become bigger than the problems we face.
When we begin to see each other through what the metaphysician calls, the third eye, we begin to know each other on a level that is beyond what our physical eyes can see.
Many people are despairing of the possibility of finding love. And some of the people who are despairing the most are in their thirties and forties and looking just great.
Relationships never end, because they’re of the mind; only bodies can separate. When you’re missing someone, know it just means that on a soul level they’ve come to visit.
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.
In each of us, there lies a divine connection to a power more powerful than hate or violence. Today is the day to attune to that power and use it on behalf of peace on earth.
Karma means that all actions have consequences. Grace means that in a moment of atonement -taking responsibility, making amends, asking for forgiveness – all karma is burned.
A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone.It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different. And there’s room in the garden for every flower.
Spiritual progress is like detoxification. Things have to come up in order to be released. Once we have asked to be healed, then our unhealed places are forced to the surface.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness.
Personal transformation can and does have global effects. As we go, so goes the world, for the world is us. The revolution that will save the world is ultimately a personal one.
Something very beautiful happens to people when their world’s fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor.
Conscious awareness is the source of our healing…Only when you say the truth can the truth set you free. This is not a negative process, but at times it is a difficult process.
A meaningful life is not a popularity contest. Do what in your heart you believe to be the right thing, and you may or may not get immediate approval from the world. Do it anyway.
Just as you wouldn’t leave the house without taking a shower, you shouldn’t start the day without at least 10 minutes of sacred practice: prayer, meditation, inspirational reading.
The key to a successful career is realizing that it’s not separate from the rest of your life, but is rather an extension of your most basic self. And your most basic self is love.
There is nowhere you need go to find God, for God is within you. There is no one you need ask if you are good enough, for He has already established He is exceedingly well pleased.
We aren’t bodies at all; who we are is the love inside us, and it is that love alone that determines our value. When our minds are filled with light, there is no room for darkness.
When we’re in our right minds, we are hopeful. Because the arc of the moral universe does bend toward justice, nature does bend toward healing, and the heart does bend toward love.
Fear is a psychic tyrant that has no intention of letting its slave go free. It will say whatever it needs to say to confuse your thinking… It will always seek to preserve itself.
No true search for enlightenment ignores the suffering of other sentient beings. Ever. We simply need to create a way to address that suffering while remaining in a blissful center.
To me, liberation doesn’t mean that I can think just like a man. Real liberation means that I can think, act, and be like a woman and receive equal respect, honor, and compensation.
The purpose of our lives is to give birth to the best that is in us. It is only through our own personal awakening that the world can be awakened. We cannot give what we do not have.
The reason so many of us are obsessed with becoming stars is because we are not yet starring in our own lives. The cosmic spotlight isn’t pointed at you, it radiates from within you.
A hero is someone who stands in the community and speaks their hopes and speaks their passion. That’s almost an act of heroism nowadays because higher consciousness is so trivialized.
As I see it, the greatest responsibility of motherhood is to make sure that our children know that there are principles of kindness, compassion, integrity, excellence, and discipline.
Like a great athlete, we must have a very clear vision of what we want to accomplish before we make a move. Vision, in preparation for an action, is as important as the action itself.
Our challenge is to not look away, but rather to transform the field; to create a new political conversation, our own conversation, out of which we can speak our truth in our own way.
Lives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture.
It takes great courage and personal strength to hold on to our center during times of great hurt. It takes wisdom to understand that our reactiveness only fans the flames of false drama.
May we not succumb to thoughts of violence and revenge today, but rather to thoughts of mercy and compassion. We are to love our enemies that they might be returned to their right minds.
When we attach value to things that aren’t love—the money, the car, the house, the prestige—we are loving things that can’t love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless.
I want to be a cheerleader for women who have never even considered running for office or being involved in a campaign, but who in the quietness of their hearts might think, ‘Why not me?’
What is happening today is that there are millions of children who are not lifted up to the first rung of the ladder. Then they are condemned when they don’t know how to climb from there.
I’ve come to trust not that events will always unfold exactly as I want, but that I will be fine either way. The challenges we face in life are always lessons that serve our soul’s growth.
Think of everything you’ve ever experienced that was painful; that’s the meaning of Good Friday. Think of all the ways that love ultimately healed your heart; that’s the meaning of Easter.
Life is a book that never ends. Chapters close, but not the book itself. The end of one physical incarnation is like the end of a chapter, on some level setting up the beginning of another.
No matter what’s happening in your life, you can change the trajectory of events by closing your eyes, reviewing your thought and behavior, and sending love wherever you’ve been withholding it.
We need more than new policies. We need a new worldview, and a new bottom line. We need to replace economic values as our ordering principle, with humanitarian values as our ordering principle.
With every thought we think, we either summon or block a miracle. It is not our circumstances, then, but rather our thoughts about our circumstances, that determine our power to transform them.
Hopefully, I will emerge more shining. If I have that good fortune, if I am blessed in that way – and I do feel I am in the middle of the blessing – then I have faith my service will be greater.
The change we are looking for is always a change within ourselves. And the change will come. I’ve noticed that as long as I’m willing to be different, something or someone arrives to show me how.
The issue is that we, with our fears, our attacks, our judgments, our blame, and our constant emphasis on the realm of the body rather than the realm of love, eclipse the experience of true love.
The power to be at peace – not because of anything your physical senses perceive, and sometimes in spite of what your physical senses perceive – is the power to help heal this world miraculously.
Your personal power is not something that is going to reveal itself at some later date. Your power is a result of your decision to reveal it. You are powerful in whatever moment you choose to be.
Sometimes, when I’m sitting with people who have been stripped of everything and who are naked and authentic and finding themselves for the first time, I am reminded of how good people really are.
No one is longing to meet a desperate needy, angry, withholding, controlling person. If your beloved is out there they can’t pick up your signals if you’re dwelling in those spaces within yourself.
Our prayer is not simply, ‚ÄòDear God, please send me a better job,’ but, ‚ÄòDear God, enable me to see this situation differently, that this area of apparent lack might be healed inside my mind.
Some people think it’s naive to think we can make love our new bottom line. What I believe is naive is thinking human civilization as we know it will survive another two hundred years if we do not.
Political system is contrary to everything a feminine heart stands for. It lacks tenderness. It lacks poetry. It doesn’t nurture. It doesn’t love. And without those things, a woman’s soul is bereft.
It’s the beginning of your day. You awake and look around you, feeling perhaps a joyful expectation, or perhaps an awful dread. No matter which, remember this: God loves you with an infinite love.
What a Beethoven, Shakespeare or Picasso has done is not create something, so much as they have accessed that place within themselves from which they could express that which has been created by God.
Beyond drama and chaos, beyond anxiety and fear, lies a zone of endless peace and love. Let’s all take a very deep breath, slow down for just a moment and remember this. That alone will open the door.
Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we’re frantic, life will be frantic. If we’re peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.
My father’s politics were old-fashioned in the sense that he used to say, all the time, “You’ve got to fight the system!” But my spiritual beliefs have led me to believe that the fight is the problem.
There should be an expanded role in this society for every human being. I see an expanded role for the human spirit, for excellence, for virtue, and for creativity – within women, and within everyone.
We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us. A loving universe makes sure that we go through those things too.
The miracle is when you shift. The miracle is when you know there is no hill – you’re removing the hill. The miracle is when you realize the time of physical decline can be a time of spiritual incline.
Claim the possibility of a miraculous shift toward global transformation, allow the thought to move through you like a wave of energy, then emerge ready for the task of doing your part to make it happen.
Enter any moment devoid of agenda, with an absence of posturing, and with your only intention being to send love to everyone you meet or even think of… Happiness, miracles and inner peace will follow.
The highest level of creativity consists in being, not doing. When the being is intense enough, when the words are spoken enough, when the thoughts are thought enough, the doing will automatically follow.
We’re hallucinating. And that’s what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined.
Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.
Jesus is a personal symbol of the Holy Spirit. Having been totally healed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus became one with him. Every thought, action, and deed of Jesus was guided by the Holy Spirit instead of ego.
Change is in the air, as old patterns fall away and new energies are emerging. Consciously release what needs to be released, and welcome with a full embrace the newness you’ve prayed for and so richly deserve.
The implication was that if you had any skepticism whatsoever, you were anti-science. I think there’s a difference between having skepticism about science and having skepticism about the pharmaceutical industry.
When you realize that the real breakthroughs come from levels of higher consciousness, then you also realize that the achievement of maturity and wisdom is the most powerful generator of new beginnings possible.
Often we see a couple who has separated or divorced and look with sadness at the ‚Äòfailure’ of their relationship. But if both people learned what they were meant to learn, then that relationship was a success.
When love isn’t in our lives, it’s on the way. If you know that a special guest is coming at five o’clock, do you spend the day messing up the home? Of course not. You prepare. And that is what we should do for love.
While overeating would be seen by some as an indulgence of self, it is in fact a profound rejection of self. It is a moment of self-betrayal and self-punishment, and anything but a commitment to one’s own well-being.
You playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightening about shrinking so others won’t feel insecure around you. As you let your own light shine, you indirectly give others permission to do the same.
If our emotional stability is based on what other people do or do not do, then we have no stability. If our emotional stability is based on love that is changeless and unalterable, then we attain the stability of God.
If our emotional stability is based on what other people do or do not do, then we have no stability. If our emotional stability is based on love that is changeless and unalterable, then we attain the stability of God.
Just like a sunbeam can’t separate itself from the sun, and a wave can’t separate itself from the ocean, we can’t separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
Dear God, May all the tears I cry, and all the tears I have not cried but hold within, pour forth into Your hands. Please take each painful thought and unhealed wound, and send angels here to me. I long for peace. Amen.
Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth.
We have a lot of choice about whether to interpret something as adversity or as opportunity. I see in myself the tendency at times to make situations worse than they have to be because of my catastrophic interpretation.
Enchanted partnership begins with the conscious understanding, on the part of two people, that the purpose of their relationship is not so much material as spiritual, and the internal skills demanded by it are prodigious.
You can know everything that the books have to say, but ultimately it boils down to whether we do the inner work of devotion and surrender, whether we can put aside our own agendas and allow the spirit to move through us.
Growth is a detox process, as our weakest, darkest places are sucked up to the surface in order to be released…often, it is not a change in partners but rather a change in perception that delivers us to the love we seek.
Nobody has to tell me about the glories of the capitalist system. But what concerns me is that there no longer seems to be a commitment to make the opportunities afforded by technology and capitalism universally accessible.
There is one God. The Jews and the Christians have no monopoly on God. I’m speaking about the same God the Hindus talk about, the same God the Muslims talk about, the same God that the Taoists and the Confucians talk about.
Every aspect of life is pre-programmed to rise to its highest creative possibility. We don’t have to make that happen, but we have to allow it to happen. And that itself is the struggle of life: resisting the resistant mind.
Go forth in confidence and go forth in peace. For there are angels to your left and angels to your right; angels in front of you and angels behind you; angels above you and angels below. You are loved, and you are not alone.
I sometimes say to people who have life-challenging illnesses: “Right now you are tempted to think that if you were physically well you would be happy. But if that were true, everybody who is physically well would be happy.”
When love is our guiding light, we can break through barriers to be of loving service to the world. Gaining the courage and confidence to stand up for what you believe in is not always easy, but it’s fully within your reach.
In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We’re not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We’re looking for a softer orientation to life.
The world in which we live today-reflecting in so many way the opposite of our sweetness and love-reminds us how desperately important it is to break the spell that’s been cast on the human race and retrieve our shining self.
Always seek less turbulent skies. Hurt. Fly above it. Betrayal. Fly above it. Anger. Fly above it. Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again. You are the one who is flying the plane.
Once you know that every moment and every person and every situation has something to teach you, you’re a student all day. You know it’s the depth of your observation that is the issue – not how much the world has to show you.
Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we keep trying to slay them in the outer world. And we find that we cannot. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there that we must do our work.
We can’t look to the world to restore our worth; we’re here to restore our worth to the world. The world outside us can reflect our glory, but it cannot create it. It cannot crown us. Only God can crown us, and he already has.
You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure about you. We were born to manifest the glory of God that is within us.
As we become purer channels for God’s light, we develop an appetite for the sweetness that is possible in this world. A miracle worker is not geared toward fighting the world that is, but toward creating the world that could be.
Genuine transcendence doesn’t just look away from human suffering and say, “I am at peace, so I’m at the mountaintop.” Genuine transcendence looks human suffering in the eye and attains peace because of a faith in things unseen.
Atoms are driven by consciousness. In proximity to love, they move in harmonious collaboration with other atoms. When in proximity to fear, they become disharmonious and chaotic. We choose each moment the energy that surrounds us.
There’s only one of us here: What we give to others, we give to ourselves. What we withhold from others, we withhold from ourselves. In any moment, when we choose fear instead of love, we deny ourselves the experience of Paradise.
Even a happy life has a sad day. We fail to provide a context which says it’s okay to cry, it’s okay to be sad. So I think making the space for suffering is so important and making space for this expression of feelings in community.
Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now. When we’re mad at people, we’re angry because of something they said or did before this moment. By letting go of the past, we make room for miracles to replace our grievances.
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.
A relationship is more of an assignment than a choice. We can walk away from the assignment, but we cannot walk away from the lessons it presents. We stay with a relationship until a lesson is learned, or we simply learn it another way.
Some men know that a light touch of the tongue, running from a woman’s toes to her ears, lingering in the softest way possible in various places in between, given often enough and sincerely enough, would add immeasurably to world peace.
The power to rethink a situation is our greatest tool for transforming the world. This notion is taking hold in medicine, in business, in education. But not in politics and the media. They are the last holdouts of old-paradigm thinking.
God created the law of free will, and God created the law of cause and effect. And he himself will not violate the law. We need to be thinking less in terms of what God did and more in terms of whether or not we are following those laws.
Individuals seem to have reached their walls and so has the entire human race. Whatever isn’t working, isn’t life-producing, isn’t producing love for ourselves or others, is going to have to go now. Or, literally, there will be hell to pay.
There is a collective force rising up on the earth today, an energy of the reborn feminine… This is a time of monumental shift, from the male dominance of human consciousness back to a balanced relationship between masculine and feminine.
Trying to suppress or eradicate symptoms on the physical level can be extremely important, but there’s more to healing than that; dealing with psychological, emotional and spiritual issues involved in treating sickness is equally important.
To the extent we are perceiving anyone’s guilt -choosing to focus on the errors of their personality rather than the eternal innocence of their spirit – we’re closing our hearts, deflecting a miracle and causing our own inevitable suffering.
The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .
We were born with a natural tendency to focus on love. Our imaginations were creative and flourishing, and we knew how to use them. We were connected to a richer world, a world full of enchantment and a sense of the miraculous. What happened?
You are completely at choice who you will be today in your interactions with others. Compassionate, kind, giving and forgiving will create one set of probabilities; angry, judgmental, critical and defensive will create another one altogether.
Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. the world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.
A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of two emotional invalids. The purpose of a relationship is not for two incomplete people to become one, but rather, for two complete people to join together for the greater glory of God.
From a pure metaphysical perspective, there is no world outside ourselves. So, at the deepest level, the state of the planet is more a reflection of the consciousness of mankind than the consciousness of mankind is a reflection of world events.
The point of Jesus’ existence wasn’t to lessen or diminish our appreciation of each other, but to expand our appreciation of each other by reminding us what lies within all of us, because Jesus was an example of the pinnacle of human evolution.
There is, inside all our heads, the ego’s rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships.
You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.
The field of quantum possibility, in which love has opened doors otherwise unimaginable, is our soul’s true habitat. The world of fear and limitation is not our home, and who among us is not profoundly weary of hanging out where we do not belong.
Every relationship either gives energy to us or withholds energy from us, according to what we give to or withhold from it. And it’s not only our behavior toward others, but our very thoughts about them, that builds and/ or destroys relationships.
…you’re on this earth with a divine purpose: to rise to the level of your highest creative possibility, expressing all that you are intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically in order to make the universe a more beautiful place.
Love is to fear as light is to dark; in the presence of one, the other cannot exist. So wherever there is a place of fear in your life, think of one thing – even if it’s just a thought you can think-where you can generate love to cast out the fear.
Our career is not something that we go out and *find.* Your perfect career is something that emerges from deep within you. When you are aligned with the truth within yourself, then you magnetize people and circumstances which align with that truth.
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.
Kennedy’s assassination was the opening salvo in the social revolution of the sixties. In some ways, perhaps, Princess Diana and Mother Teresa dying when they did, and how they did, represent the opening salvos of a social revolution in the nineties.
My biggest past mistakes have been when I made decisions out of ego rather than spirit. When I acted too quickly. When I wasn’t contemplative or reflective or prayerful enough, and I ended up making what I would only later see to be unwise decisions.
There is a dichotomy between people who feel economic principles should order human civilization and people who believe humanitarian principles should order human civilization. That essential disagreement is underlying practically all our world drama.
We cannot give what we do not have: We cannot bring peace to the world if we ourselves are not peaceful. We cannot bring love to the world if we ourselves are not loving. Our true gift to ourselves and others lies not in what we have but in who we are.
To bear witness to all the unnecessary suffering on the planet and make ourselves available to service – whatever that means for each of us. We go deep in our personal relationships in America, but we need to go deep in our public relationships as well.
We have great power to affect the attitudes and behavior of the people around us, at work and at home. We have the power to set a tone of honor, to create an energy around ourselves that says, ‘I respect myself. I respect you. Let’s respect each other.’
The real axis of social change is not horizontal, but vertical. We don’t need a whole bunch of people gathering to think shallow thoughts together. What we need is for as many people as are ready to go there, to gather and think deep thoughts together.
The enlightened world will be one in which everyone is in love with everyone all the time. We will see each other as God created us: as the perfect, loving, and lovable people we really are. The purpose of romantic love is to jump-start our enlightenment.

We are so trained in the thought system of fear and attack that we get to the point where natural thinking – love – feels unnatural and unnatural thinking – fear – feels natural. It takes real discipline and training to unlearn the thought system of fear.

When you meet anyone, remember it is a holy encounter. As you see him, you will see yourself. As you treat him, you will treat yourself. As you think of him, you will think of yourself. Never forget this, for in him you will find yourself or lose yourself.
The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person.
The ego mind both professes its desire for love and does everything possible to repel it, or if it gets here anyway, to sabotage it. That is why dealing with issues like control, anger, and neediness is the most important work in preparing ourselves for love.
When it comes to our money and work lives, most of us have had our challenges, our valleys. Most of us have a couple of files in our head. One, I name “It was my own damn fault.” And the other one I name, “I don’t know how I will ever forgive those bastards.”
Your relationship with love is your relationship with the essence of who you are. It affects your relationship with your body, and your relationship with food. When you realize that you are a spirit and that this body is a temple, then you want to treat it well.
Enlightenment doesn’t mean we were never wounded; it means we’ve found a way to evolve beyond our wounds. Enlightenment isn’t idealistic; it’s practical. What’s idealistic is thinking we can live from our wounds, stay in our weakness, and ever transform the world.
I do believe 50 is the new 40 and 60 is the new 50. Hell, maybe 60 can be the new 40, I don’t know. I believe that when we give ourselves permission, we can live with an excitement and heat and passion that most women in previous generations were unable to attain.
Until we see love as the meaning of life, life seems to have no meaning at all. The sense of meaninglessness produces chaos, and the chaos produces fear. There is only one way out of this, and that is to see every moment and every situation as an invitation to love.
Whenever we feel lost, or insane, or afraid, all we have to do is ask for His help. The help might not come in the form we expected, or even thought we desired, but it will come, and we will recognize it by how we feel. In spite of everything, we will feel at peace.
There is a lot to look at when you are serious about transformation. You look at everything you’ve ever done, every circumstance you’ve ever been in, cleaning up everything in your past. Reconciling, forgiving others, forgiving yourself. It’s a lot of work, actually.
When infants aren’t held, they can become sick, even die. It’s universally accepted that children need love, but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do. We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.
A level of anxiety and tension and outright fear that so many people have felt, not only during the recession but during this slow economic recovery since. This made me very much want to up the conversation about how miracle-minded thinking applies to that area of life.
In the Holy Relationship, it’s understood that we all have unhealed places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with another person. We don’t hide our weaknesses, but rather we understand that the relationship is a context for healing through mutual forgiveness.
You know what we need to heal are the thought forms and the feelings that cause us to create war and mass destruction on this kind of a level, because ultimately if we are to survive as a species, we have to become a human race for whom the thought of war is unthinkable.
We need not wait for the world to become more mystical; the world is mystical. Our problem is not that the world lacks magic; our problem is that we don’t believe in its magic. We do not show up fully for life, and then wonder why life is not showing up more fully for us.
During times of challenge, what you have faith in is what determines what the challenge will turn into. Have faith in the reality of the challenge, and it will birth more challenges. Have faith in the reality of miracles, and the challenge will transform into something else.
The love within us is meant to extend outward. The closer we grow to our inner light, we feel a natural urge to share it. We all long for meaningful work, some creative endeavor that will be our ministry, by which the energies within us might flow out to help heal the world.
Love is everywhere, but if our eyes aren’t open to see it, we miss out. Who among us hasn’t missed out on love because we were looking for it in one package and it came in another? Our problem is rarely a lack of love so much as a mental block to our awareness of its presence.*
Many people who say they’re looking for love are merely looking for superficial comfort. They’re not looking yet for the true romantic adventure. For that entails a readiness to die to who we were, in order to be born again prepared for love, truly worthy of the romantic heights.
We must keep in mind that where the road is crooked, God makes it straight, and where our hearts are wounded, God makes us whole. As we open our hearts in purity and simplicity, admitting to God that we are completely powerless in the area of our problem, His illumination redeems us.
Take stock of your thoughts and behavior. Each night ask yourself, when were you negative when you could have been positive? When did you withhold love when you might have given it? When did you play a neurotic game instead of behaving in a powerful way? Use this process to self-correct.
The Law of Divine Compensation posits that this is a self-organizing and self-correcting universe: the embryo becomes a baby, the bud becomes a blossom, the acorn becomes an oak tree. Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression.
We need to shift from an economic organizing principle for human civilization, to a humanitarian organizing principle. Making money more important than your own children is a pathological way for an individual to run their affairs, and it’s a pathological way for a society to run its affairs.
There’s a collective knowing that a dimension of reality exists beyond the material plane, and that sense of knowing is causing a mystical resurgence on the planet today. It’s not just children who are looking for a missing piece. It is a very mature outlook to question the nature of our reality.
If our prayer is ‚ÄúDear God, please use me to be of service,‚Äù then that is what we will be. And it is not for us to judge either the size or value of our gifts. Our job is to try to get out of the way, to defer to the spirit moving within us and become open channels for the flow of God’s love.
Our thoughts about the future go far toward creating it; our minds and hears are like filaments taht connect today to tomorrow, they are conduits for either the status quo or the emergence of different, hopefully more loving, possibilities. How we think and how we behave determine where we are going
Focus on guilt will always breed fear, and focus on innocence will always breed love. Any time we project guilt onto someone else, we are fortifying the experience of guilt within ourselves. Like blood on Lady MacBeth’s hands, we cannot remove our own guilty feelings as long as we are judging others.
Relationships are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which he brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth.
In every moment, we make a choice about which direction we are going to go. Once we realize that this is a self-correcting and self-organizing universe, then we don’t have to look any further than our own life circumstances, the relationships and situations that we are in, to begin the transformation.
Whatever we focus on is bound to expand. Where we see the negative, we call forth more negative. And where we see the positive, we call forth more positive. Having loved and lost, I now love more passionately. Having won and lost, I now win more soberly. Having tasted the bitter, I now savor the sweet.
My biggest sorrow, when looking back on my youth, is how much of it I somehow missed. Now, looking at my life today, I don’t want to make the same mistake. I don’t want to miss this. As Bonnie Raitt sang like she was singing it for all of us, “Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste.”
From a mind filled with infinite love comes the power to create infinite possibilities. We have the power to think in ways that reflect and attract all the love in the world. Such thinking is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a process we work toward, but a choice available to us in any instant.
The universe is a multi-dimension al creative process, constantly forming new facets of possibility for you and all living things. Expanding our awareness of the process, we allow ourselves to experience more of it. Every moment we can remember that ANYTHING is possible in a realm of endless possibility.
Whatever outrageous dream keeps flowing across your mind, allow it to live inside you. Don’t deflect it, diminish it, invalidate it or come up with some excuse for why it can’t happen. This will allow it to explain itself to you – why it’s there, what it means, and what if anything you should do about it.
There is no they, only us. We are part of a large fellowship called the human race. We all hurt the same. We all love the same. We all bleed the same. We all need understanding and care. We can’t separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of the same vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.
Governments move armies, but only individuals can move hearts. And with every act of love that emanates from any of us, we are activating miracles, adding to a spiritual ocean that in time will purify our planet of all vestiges of fear. Love alone can triumph over hate, and if we give it the chance, it will.
In every moment we make a decision — whether conscious or unconscious. Will I choose to open my heart, send love, withhold judgment and thus free myself from fear? Or will I close my heart, project fear instead of extending love, judge others, and thus bind myself to fear? The choice is mine and mine alone.
Obviously, our political system is profoundly corrupted by, among other things, the influence of money. But, at a deeper level, the current structure is flawed because it looks to citizens for only two things – votes and money. I don’t think we will see any healing until citizens are viewed in a whole new way.
I can’t say that there are ‚Äúthings‚Äù 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 now.
Every time we’re about to criticize someone for what we think they did wrong, let’s first remember to thank them for the things they did right. And to mean it; to sincerely affirm them. Then, if there’s still a problem that needs to be shared, it will come from a completely different energy — and actually be heard!
Sometimes, when I talk to someone who has just been diagnosed with cancer or some other illness, I’ll remind them: “If you were honest with yourself, you were depressed before this happened. And if this were over you would be happy for a couple of weeks, a couple of months, and then something else would come along.”
I think the greatest gift we can give our children is the experience of deep quiet. If we don’t help our children cultivate contemplation, reflection, prayer, meditation, or whatever other practice of mindfulness, then they’re likely to be completely spun out of their center by the time they’re in grade school.
Love floods our nervous system with positive energy, making us far more attractive to prospective employers, clients, and creative partners… Love leads us to act with impeccability, integrity, and excellence… Those things are the opposite of a poverty consciousness; they’re the stuff of spiritual wealth creation.
People want the nation to transform in the same way they want their own lives to transform. If you’re interested in transforming your life, you can’t just transform some things. You can’t try to fix some things, but sweep other things under the rug because it’s too hard to face them. And the same is true for a nation.
If we get away from the lazy and fuzzy thinking that is like a poison in our society – if we get away from all the bad television that we tend to watch – and begin to take up serious meditation and other sacred exercises, we will have a real revolution of consciousness. If that happens, the world will change by itself.
There is no way that carrying fifty or sixty extra pounds is easy on your heart, your lungs, or your liver. That’s a fact. Every person in the world, no matter what size, shape, or form they are, deserves respect and love. But that doesn’t mean we are supposed to pretend that something is healthy when in fact it is not.
The wisdom that comes from having experienced heartbreak cannot be bequeathed; it can only be gained through experience. And having truly felt it, we are far more likely to have compassion for others. Anything that takes us close to true compassion takes us closer to what will one day be an experience of even greater joy.
Happiness is the choice I make today. It does not rest on my circumstances, but on my frame of mind…In cultivating the habits of happiness, I attract the people and situations that match its frequency. I smile more often, give praise more often, give thanks more often, and am glad more often. For such is my choice today.
Usually we try to figure out what we think would make us happy, and then try to make those things happen. But happiness isn’t circumstance-de pendent. There are people who have every reason in the world to be happy who aren’t. There are people with genuine problems who are. The key to happiness is the decision to be happy.
What’s difficult in life is to stay centered when somebody does or says something that tempts us to close our hearts because their heart was closed. That is hard. But that is also how we grow. We go through those circumstances in order to evolve into people who can hold to our loving center no matter what the world throws us.
Women will not be free until we can speak our minds and our hearts without having to worry that men will crucify us, women will crucify us, the press will crucify us, or our children will be ashamed… Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we feel we have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.
A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.
One of the reasons the political right-wing in this country has had such an upsurge in popularity is because they have at least acknowledged the idea of God, and the so-called liberals have lost by default. The left-wing is too cool to even mention God, so — Middle America thinks, ‘Well, I guess God’s in the Republican Party.
Our divine perfection – not registered by the physical eye but only by the heart’s knowing – is who we truly are. Our mortal imperfections – registered by the physical senses – are not who we truly are. Yet we keep trying, in love, to find each other’s perfection within the world of imperfection. And it simply is not there.
For many people, God is a frightening idea. Asking God for help doesn’t seem very comforting if we think of Him as something outside ourselves, or capricious, or judgmental. But God is love and He dwells within us. We are created in His image, or mind, which means that we are extensions of His love, or Sons and Daughters of God.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
You can’t remove that layer of pain by just saying, “Okay, I’m not going to wallow in it.” The only way to remove that layer of pain is to face what it says and to recognize it as the look in the mirror that it is, reflecting the things you did that you wish you hadn’t done and the things you didn’t do that you wish you had done.
Healing works through a kind of detox: things have got to come up in order to be released. That is true of our personal issues, and also our collective issues. We can’t just push the darkness down, pour pink paint over it and then pretend it’s not there. We have to look at it, accept that it exists and then release it for healing.
There is no such thing as a faithless person; we either have faith in the power of love, or faith in the power of fear. For faith is an aspect of consciousness. Have faith in love, and fear will lose its power over you. Have faith in forgiveness, and your self-hatred will fall away. Have faith in miracles, and they will come to you.
In his farewell address, George Washington warned the people about political parties. Now we see how both Democrats and Republicans have conspired to reduce democratic participation. If this is the best the Democrats and Republicans have to offer, it’s time to look elsewhere.Politics should be the prism for our most noble intentions.
When we stop trying to control events, they fall into a natural order, an order that works. We’re at rest while a power much greater than our own takes over, and it does a much better job than we could have done. We learn to trust that the power that holds galaxies together can handle the circumstances of our relatively little lives.
I don’t believe there are any powers, which in the larger sense, are unnatural or even supernatural. I think we just do not yet scientifically understand all of the powers inherent in the human consciousness, and the more attuned we are to the realm of spirit, the more our conscious mind is available to subconscious, spiritual prompting.
The people who have achieved more than you, in any area, are only a half step ahead of you in time. Bless them and praise their gifts, and bless and praise your own. The world would be less rich without their contributions, and it would be less rich without yours. There’s more than room for everyone; in fact, there’s a need for everyone.
There is simply too much unnecessary suffering in our world. And we should see that as a national security risk, by the way. Given enough time, desperate people will tend to do desperate things. At a certain point you won’t be able to build enough prisons or enough bombs to eradicate the effects of all that violence inside so many hearts.
We’re just afraid, period. Our fear is free-floating. We’re afraid this isn’t the right relationship or we’re afraid it is. We’re afraid they won’t like us or we’re afraid they will. We’re afraid of failure or we’re afraid of success. We’re afraid of dying young or we’re afraid of growing old. We’re more afraid of life than we are of death.
Think of your career as your ministry. Make your work an expression of love, in service to mankind. Within the worldly illusion, we all have different jobs. Some of us are artists, some of us are business people, some of us are scientists. But in the real world that lies beyond all this, we all have the same job: to minister to human hearts.
The Goddess doesn’t enter us from outside; she emerges from deep within. She is not held back by what happened in the past. She is conceived in consciousness, born in love, and nurtured by higher thinking. She is integrity and value, created and sustained by the hard work of personal growth and the discipline of a life lived actively in hope.
How tragic it is that so often we stop everything just as we reach the starting line. We must move past the narcissistic preoccupation with getting the love we think ‘works’ for us. The point of love is to make us grow, not to make us immediately happy. Many of us have forsworn the chance for the deepest love in reaching out for the easier one.
When we do align with it, we thrive. And when we do not, we suffer. This is not “punishment.” It is merely the Law of Cause and Effect. With each thought we think, we either align with universal love, or we disconnect ourselves from it. Whichever is our choice determines whether we then feel connected to, or disconnected, from our own true Selves.
I feel that the term “new age” is used by basically hostile media to diminish and marginalize a conversation that is very significant. It’s held in place by journalists who are constantly looking for hooks and sound bites to keep them from having to make the effort of a deeper understanding and a more profound level of communication with the public.
We’re all assigned a piece of the garden, a corner of the universe that is ours to transform. Our corner of the universe is our own life – our relationships, our homes, our work, our current circumstances -. exactly as they are. Every situation we find ourselves in is an opportunity, perfectly planned by the Holy Spirit, to teach love instead of fear.
In the century now dawning, spirituality, visionary consciousness, and the ability to build and mend human relationships will be more important for the fate and safety of this nation than our capacity to forcefully subdue an enemy. Creating the world we want is a much more subtle but more powerful mode of operation than destroying the one we don’t want.
No matter what is happening in our lives, we choose how we wish to think about it. And the greatest gift we give ourselves is often our willingness to change our minds. Despite what might seem to be the saddest and most intractable situation, we have the power to believe that something else is possible, that things can change, that a miracle can happen.
Our problem isn’t that the universe isn’t on our side; the problem is that too many of us numb these days, not awake to the game, or to the power of the universe that flows through our psychic veins. Some of us need to stop whining. It’s not like we’re the first generation who faced serious challenges. But others rose to the occasion, and we need to too.
God picks you up. You don’t pick yourself up. You’re the one who knocked you down or even if somebody else knocked you down, your willingness to believe that what they said had value, was your conspiring with them, with their effort to knock you down – I’ve never been able to get myself up and I’ve noticed that every time I ask God to pick me up – he does.
We give up what we want to give up and keep what in some way we still want to keep. There are payoffs for holding on to small, weak patterns. We have an excuse not to shine. We don’t have to take responsibility for the world when we’re spending all our time in emotional pain. We’re too busy. The truth that sets us free is an embrace of the divine within us.
World conditions challenge us to look beyond the status quo for responses to the pain of our times. We look to powers within as well as powers without. A new, spiritually based social activism is beginning to assert itself. It stems not from hating what is wrong and trying to fight it, but from loving what could be and making the commitment to bring it forth.
Rather than accepting that we are the loving beings that He created, we have arrogantly thought that we could create ourselves, and then create God. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. We have made up a God in our image. But God remains who He is and always has been: the energy, the thought of unconditional love.
The right tends to posit that the market fuels social good. The left tends to posit that the government fuels social good. At bottom, democracy claims that citizens drive social good, but there is currently no container for a political force-field that stakes claim to the unbelievable resources now virtually untapped in every man, woman, and child in our society.
We must relinquish our passive observation of the world outside; we can open the door to the world we want. In understanding ourselves, we come to understand the world. In allowing ourselves to heal, we become the healers of the world. In praying for peace, we become bringers of peace. Thus we actualize the power within us to remedy the psychic wounds of humanity.
If we only identify with the mortal world, then we identify with a level of scarcity and lack and brokenness, and that will be our experience. But if we shift our experience of self-identification – and this is what enlightenment is – from the body-self to the spiritual-self, then we place ourselves under an entirely different set of possibilities and probabilities.
The self-organizing and self-correcting imprint is on all aspects of reality. So not only was your body formed by this invisible hand, not only does your body continue to work by this invisible hand, but every aspect of your life – emotionally, physiologically, and spiritually – is also programmed to thrive, is also programmed for self-organization and self-correction.
People on a spiritual path – personal growth, spiritual practice, recovery, yoga and so forth – are the last people who should be sitting out the social and political issues of our day. And there’s an important reason for this: People on such journeys are adepts at change. They know that the mechanics of the heart and mind are the fundamental drivers of transformation.
Imagine any problem you have to be a huge, locked door standing in front of you. Now see yourself taking a golden key out of your pocket. You brought the key here with you when you arrived on this planet, but you sometimes forget to use it. See yourself putting it into the keyhole, then watch the door swing open. On the key are inscribed these words, “Unconditional Love.”
Until we get to the point where we’ve had enough of things that hurt and long more than anything for a peaceful love, we are bound to take painful roads. We are destined to play out our frivolous disasters until we declare ourselves finished and done with them. How much pain do we have to suffer before we are sure we want no more? As much, it seems, as we have to until we don’t.
Within the miraculous brew of universal creativity , all you desire already exists. Spend five minutes each morning with your eyes closed, living in that dimension. Allow images to unfold without censor. Feel yourself living the most magnificent life — a life of joy, creativity and love — as you grow inwardly into the person you need to be in order to manifest it effortlessly.
As long as you identify with the universe – which is perfect and can correct material conditions to bring them back into alignment with that Divine perfection – as long as that is where your mind is aligned, it’s as though there were two parallel universes. You decide with every thought you think which one you’re going to inhabit. Two parallel universes of experience, as it were.
By softening our attitudes, practicing mercy and compassion, we transform our lives by transforming other people’s experience of us. Send love before you when you enter a room, and people will subconsciously feel it; they’ll be prone to show greater kindness in return. That’s how love makes things work better in our lives; it realigns the reactions of people and things around us.
When we pray for God to illumine our path, we are saying, ‚ÄòDear God, please show me the way. What thoughts do I need to think, to be able to navigate my life at this point? What perceptions do I need; what insights will guide me? Who do I need to forgive? What parts of my personality do I need to look at; what changes do I need to make? Please come upon me and heal my life. Amen.
Forgiveness is a selective remembering. It is a conscious choice to focus on someone’s innocence instead of his or her mistakes…This serves *you*…Your body was not created to bear the burden of your overattachment to it, but was created as a container for the light of your spirit. It will more easily remember how to function perfectly when you remember the perfection in everyone.
The way to have the life we want is to receive more deeply the life we have. Sometimes we keep our own life at arm’s length, thinking we’ll wait until circumstances improve before giving it all we’ve got. But life is just a reflection of consciousness, so it’s never going to give any more to us than we give to it. Don’t wait for a perfect life; breathe in the life that’s already perfect.
Meaning doesn’t lie in things. Meaning lies in us. When we attach value to things that aren’t love – the money, the car, the house, the prestige – we are loving things that can’t love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless. Money, of itself, means nothing. Material things, of themselves, mean nothing. It’s not that they’re bad. It’s that they’re nothing. (“A Return to Love”)
Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the energy around us reflects our state of awareness.
Take a good look at your life right now. If you don’t like something about it, close your eyes and imagine the life you want. Now allow yourself to focus your inner eye on the person you would be if you were living this preferred life. Notice the differences in how you behave and present yourself; allow yourself to spend several seconds breathing in the new image, expanding your energy into this.
The universe is wired with the electricity of God, & each of us is a lamp. It doesn’t matter the size or shape of the lamp; it only matters that the lamp is plugged in. With every prayer, every thought of forgiveness, every meditation, every act of love, we plug in. The more of us who plug in, to more the darkness of the world will be cast from our midst. Today, let’s all increase love’s wattage!
The rage building up, generation after generation, among what has become a permanent underclass in many parts of the world cannot continue. We are desperately undereducating our children. In the United States, we are turning prison-building into the single largest urban industry. These are like toxic chemical factors any one of which could cause a raging fire. God help us if they begin to interact.
Every time we focus on someone else’s darkness, we are blocking our own view of the light. We think the person we are involved with has attacked us or has withheld love from us, when they really haven’t. We focus on their guilt instead of their innocence. Frequently people are just being themselves and we start projecting our own childhood dramas onto them, pushing away the very love we want so much.
We all make mistakes, we all have fears, and we all have weaknesses. Behind all that is our essential self. When our essential self has made contact with another, the light is dazzling and would fill the universe. The challenge of enchantment is to remain faithful to that light, to believe in it when it is not so apparent. Then that light becomes an incandescent glow and it wraps itself around everything.
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.
The only way to gain power in a world that is moving too fast is to learn to slow down. And the only way to spread one’s influence wide to learn how to go deep. The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it.
17,000 children starve on this planet every single day. That fact alone should blow any conscious person out of their chair. You know, my mother used to say that a woman’s most important job is taking care of her children and her home. I laughed at that when I was younger, but I don’t laugh at it anymore. I just realize now that every child on the planet is one of our children, and the earth itself is our home.
Sometimes when we’re feeling sad, it’s important just to feel the sadness. Like a snake shedding its skin, old feelings of remorse and regret and hurt and anger often have to come up in order to be released. On the other side we’re a better person, capable of a happier life…who we are when we’re no longer burdened by the buried feelings that weighed us down, or the self – defeating patterns that the pain produced.
If a train doesn’t stop at your station, it’s simply because it’s not your train. Don’t try to flag down the conductor and convince them to stop there, even if their own map says that they should just keep going. You may not realize it, but there’s another train trying to come toward you, unable to get into your station because a train that doesn’t even belong there is being delayed there by your intensity.
Today, the reason we haven’t found our grail, the key to who we are as women, is because we look for it in worlds of false power, the very worlds that took it away from us in the first place. Neither men nor work can restore our lost scepter. Nothing in this world can take us home. Only the radar in our hearts can do that, and when it does, … ‘We will light up like lamps, and the world will never be the same again.’
We need less posturing and more genuine charisma. Charisma was originally a religious term, meaning “of the spirit” or “inspired.” It’s about letting God’s light shine through us. It’s about a sparkle in people that money can’t buy. It’s an invisible energy with visible effects. To let go, to just love, is not to fade into the wallpaper. Quite the contrary, it’s when we truly become bright. We’re letting our own light shine.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
The revolution of ideas that will save us is a revolution of goodwill, of compassion, and of higher thinking. I believe that they outnumber the people who would choose fear. But they are not a particularly politicized force. If you look at the numbers of people buying books about revolutions from within and personal transformation as the key to global change, the numbers add up to a much greater audience than most people realize.
Our greatest hope is for the experience of joy, and often we are not as smart as we think we are when it comes to predicting what would bring us that joy. . . Hope that is attached to a particular outcome is looking for pleasure but fishing for pain, because attachment itself is a source of pain. It is best to hope for an experience of life in all its fullness-a life that can embrace both joy and sorrow, and will still be at peace.
If you allow spirit to have dominion in your heart you will have dominion in your life. That changes thinking. That IS the miracle. That I’m not just a child of the body, I’m a child of the universe and in the universe I am programmed for greatness, and the fact that I don’t have money in my bank account now doesn’t mean I’m any less programmed for greatness. I was programmed for greatness just like the acorn is programmed to be an oak tree.
You have tremendous gifts to give; God sent them with you when you came to this earth. And while you might forget them, or doubt they exist, God does not forget and He will show them to you. As soon as your gifts are dedicated to His work, they will blossom. Chains that might have held you back for years will dissolve. And you will feel free. You will learn that your spirit is bigger than your circumstances, as soon as you put your spirit first.
A failure remains a failure only if we refuse to learn from it. Any situation that teaches us greater humility, sobriety, wisdom about self and others, responsibility, forgiveness, depth of reflection, and better decision making –teaching us what’s truly important–is not an ultimate failure. Sometimes what we deem a failure at the time it happens actually serves to foster a change within us that creates an even greater success down the road.
Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that’s where humanity is now: about to discover we’re not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are.
When women think of power, we shouldn’t think of it only for ourselves. We should be thinking about what we’re going to do with power, once we have it. Women should be standing up powerfully and passionately for the care and protection of children, as well as the care and protection of the Earth itself. Women’s voices should be front and center in protecting both our young and our habitat. That’s the way it is in any species that survives.
When you are dealing with a serious compulsion or addictive pattern, then by definition self-will, self-discipline, and any other machinations of the conscious mind are not enough by themselves to handle the problem. It is like a breaker switch in your brain is simply flipped. Anybody who has had this kind of a problem knows that it doesn’t matter how intelligent you are. Sigmund Freud said, “Intelligence will be used in the service of the neurosis.”
There is a lot of sixties-bashing going on these days that I don’t agree with at all. I feel that extremely important ideals were brought to the forefront of the collective consciousness at that time. Granted, drug use was so pervasive that our generation did not as a group have the capacity to manifest our ideals to any great extent. But many of the people who were young in the sixties and who were most touched by that collective ethos are still touched.
We live in a self-organizing and self-correcting universe. For every problem, there is a potentially miraculous solution. A closed heart deflects the miracle, while an open heart brings it forth….In every moment, we make a choice between the heavenly awareness of our connection to all living things, or the hell of the delusion that we are separate and alone. The mind will manufacture according to our choice; whichever we choose, we will seem to experience.
The world we live in pictures a pie with only so many pieces, and if other people have more you have less, and you have to compete with other people in order to try to get ahead. You have to sell yourself at every available opportunity. The shift, the enlightened shift, has to do with a movement from competition to collaboration, from sales to service, from ambition to inspiration, and to a belief in scarcity to a belief in abundance as an eternal spiritual quality.
Allowing the pain of personal growth to be a crucible of your spirit-the alchemical grail through which the metal of your former self turns into gold-is one of the highest callings of life. Pain can burn you up and destroy you, or burn you up and redeem you. It can deliver you to an entrenched despair, or deliver you to your higher self. At midlife we decide, consciously or unconsciously, the path of the victim or the path of the phoenix when it is rising up at last.
Someone with whom we have a lifetime’s worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow…those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds–the places where we feel we can’t love any more, can’t connect any more deeply, can’t forgive past a certain point. We are in each other’s lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.
The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, “Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela’s 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people.
Judaism, Christianity, and I’m sure other religions also, are having to deal with the fact that they may or may not have lived up at all times to the injunctions of their own mystical center. For instance, when I went to Sunday school, I remember learning more about Jewish history than about God. So, once again, that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the Jewish religion, it just means that sometimes people are not fed the mystical food – the spiritual food – of their own religious background.
Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. And the universe is not only self-organizing, it is also self-correcting. The embryo becomes a baby; the baby is born; its lungs continue to breathe – not only were they created but then they continue to breathe. The heart is not only created but it continues to breathe. If there is injury and disease that becomes present within the body, the body is also equipped with an immune system to correct that.
Forgiveness does not mean that we suppress anger; forgiveness means that we have asked for a miracle: the ability to see through mistakes that someone has made to the truth that lies in all of our hearts. Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness. Attack thoughts towards others are attack thoughts towards ourselves. The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.
How we sit within the body is an extremely important part of the spiritual journey. The body itself is used either by the spirit within us, or by the fear-based mind. When it is used by the spirit, then it is a thing of holiness. How we dwell within it, how we treat it, and how we use it in relationship to other aspects of the planet is extremely important. When we use the body without reverence, we are destructive elements on the planet. We become destructive to ourselves, to other life forms, and to the earth.
People who have life-challenging experiences who choose to remain invested in a consistent catastrophic interpretation are not the ones I meet. I have met many more people who have recognized how vital it is to their healing and to the quality of their life to interpret their experiences differently. That is why some of the people I’ve met who have life-challenging illnesses are much happier than some people I’ve known who are physically quite healthy and yet who live lives of greater desperation and depression.
I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children’s souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies.
Dear God, Please teach me to forgive myself and others. Remove the walls that keep love out, behind which I am a prisoner. Heal my guilt and remove my anger, that I might be reborn. Make gentle my heart and strong my spirit and show me how to love. Please show me how to honor myself. Please teach me how to listen to myself. “Please program my mind to know itself, that I might at last be free. Teach me to appreciate your spirit that lives within me. Show me how to be good to myself, that I might know more fully the goodness of life. Amen
In medicine, we have invented an entirely new healing paradigm. Now we no longer simply look to the doctor and to medicine to heal us. We now recognize what has been substantiated scientifically everywhere from Harvard to Duke to Stanford – that the power of the mental and spiritual consciousness of the patient is as significant in healing as physical factors are. If we apply that same paradigm to politics, we see that the mind and the spiritual consciousness of the citizen are every bit as important as anything that goes on in the government.
I have lived large parts of my life in wonderful circumstances that I utterly failed to appreciate. Reasons to be happy were everywhere, but somehow I didn’t connect with them. It was as though I was eating but couldn’t taste the food. Finally, I’ve learned to celebrate the good while it’s happening. I feel gratitude and praise today for what are sometimes such simple pleasures. I have learned that happiness is not determined by circumstances. Happiness is not what happens when everything goes the way you think it should go; happiness is what happens when you decide to be happy.
Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts.
A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different. And there’s room in the garden for every flower. You didn’t have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else’s on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They’re all different without trying to be. As long as they’re unselfconsciously being themselves, they can’t help but shine. It’s only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.
Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

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About Marianne Williamson

Quotes by Marianne Williamson

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