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My ego mind--my own self-hatred masquerading as self-love--would point me always in the direction of fear, luring me toward the blaming thought, the attack or defense, the perception of guilt in myself or others.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us, and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person.
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Marianne Williamson |
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When two people come together in God, the walls that appear to separate us disappear. The beloved doesn't seem to be a mere mortal. They seem for a while to be something else, something more. The truth is, they are something more. No one is anything less than the perfect Son of God, and when we fall in love, we have an instant when we see the total truth about someone. They are perfect. That's not just our imagination.
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Marianne Williamson |
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According to A Course in Miracles, this separation from God first happened millions of years ago. But the important revelation, the crux of the Course, is that in reality it never happened at all.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Jesus lived within this world of fear, and perceived only love. Every action, every word, every thought was guided by the Holy Spirit instead of the ego. He was a thoroughly purified being. To think about him is to think about, and so to call forth, the perfect love inside ourselves.
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Marianne Williamson |
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A Course in Miracles says that only love is real: "The opposite of love is fear, but what is all-encompassing can have no opposite." When we think with love, we are literally co-creating with God. And when we're not thinking with love, since only love is real, then we're actually not thinking at all. 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 crazi..
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Marianne Williamson |
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T]horoughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life; worse still, we take this step with the false assumption that our truths and ideals will serve us as hitherto. But we cannot live the afternoon of life according to the programme of life's morning; for what was great in the morning will be little at evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening have become a lie. -- Carl Jung, Stages of Life
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Marianne Williamson |
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If we're talented at music, that talent is of god. If something makes our heart sing, that's god's way of telling us its a contribution he wants us to make. Sharing our gifts is what makes us happy. We're most powerful and god's power is most apparent on the earth when we're happy. A course in miracles teaches that we are only truly happy when we're doing god's will. The only thing to be saved from is our own negativity and fear. The cr..
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purpose
talent
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Marianne Williamson |
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Your job is to allow the Holy Spirit to remove the fearful thinking that surrounds your perfect self, just as excess marble surrounded Michelangelo's perfect statue.
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Marianne Williamson |
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In the Christic tradition, this is the meaning of 'becoming as a little child.' Little children don't think they know what things mean, in fact, they know they don't know. They ask someone older and wiser to explain things to them. We're like children who don't know but think we do. We're meant to shine. Look at small children. They're all so unique before they start trying to be, because they demonstrate the power of genuine humilit..
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humility
inspiration
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Marianne Williamson |
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We're not aligned with the Holy Spirit until people can behave in any way they choose to, and our own inner peace isn't shaken. There
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Marianne Williamson |
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The difference between a friendship and a romance is illustrated in the image of a long-stemmed rose. The stem is the friendship, the blossom is the romance. Because the ego is sensation-oriented, our focus automatically goes to the blossom, but all the nourishment which the blossom needs in order to live reaches it through the stem. The stem might look boring in comparison, but if you take the blossom off the stem, it will not last for ..
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romance
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Marianne Williamson |
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because only love is real. It is our function to see through the illusion of guilt, to the innocence that lies beyond. "To forgive is merely to remember only the loving thoughts you gave in the past, and those that were given you. All"
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Marianne Williamson |
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It amuses me to think how angry I used to get when people wouldn't sign my peace petitions.
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Marianne Williamson |
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that is real in our past is the love we gave and the love we received.
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Marianne Williamson |
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I remember spending years of my life so upset about all of the life choices I felt I had available that I never moved. I was paralyzed by all the possibilities. I couldn't figure out which road would lead me to the fulfillment of my potential, this glorious, neurotic myth that lay always just in front of whatever I could manifest now. So I was always too scared to move, and fear of course is the great betrayer of self. The difference betwee..
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Marianne Williamson |
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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.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Love is within us. It cannot be destroyed, but can only be hidden.
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Marianne Williamson |
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A certain amount of desperation is usually necessary before we're ready for God.
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Marianne Williamson |
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We're affected by other peoples' lovelessness only to the extent to which we judge them for it. Otherwise we are invulnerable to the ego, as the Son of God is meant to be.
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Marianne Williamson |
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The irony is that the opposite is true: available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy. They might actually hang around long enough to get to know us. They could melt our defenses, not through violence but through love. This is what the ego doesn't want us to see. Available people are frightening. They threaten the ego's citadel. The reason we're not attracted to them is becau..
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Marianne Williamson |
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Whether we're forgiving our parents or someone else or ourselves, the laws of mind remain the same. As we love, we shall be released from pain and as we deny love, we shall remain in pain. Each of us have different fears and different manifestations of fear, but all of us are saved by the same technique: The call to God to save our lives by salvaging our minds. 'Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For love is the kin..
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love
personal-growth
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Marianne Williamson |
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Sometimes, in fact, it was the people who loved us the most who felt it was their responsibility to train us to struggle.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Forgiveness is like the martial arts of consciousness. In aikido and other martial arts, we sidestep our attacker's force rather than resisting it. The energy of the attack then boomerangs back in the direction of the attacker. forgiveness works in the same way. When we attack back, and defense is a form of attack, we initiate a war which no one can win.
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inspirational
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Marianne Williamson |
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God has lit your mind Himself, and keeps your mind lit by His Light because His Light is what your mind is.
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Marianne Williamson |
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If we really desire a moral answer to the Holocaust, we do everything in our power to create a world in which it could never happen again. As
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Marianne Williamson |
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Partners are meant to have a priestly role in each other's lives. They are meant to help each other access the highest parts within themselves.
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Marianne Williamson |
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What the ego doesn't want us to see is that our pain doesn't come from the love we weren't given in the past, but from the love we ourselves aren't giving in the present. Salvation
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Marianne Williamson |
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The ego is our pain, but it is what we know and we resist moving out of it. The effort it takes to grow out of painful patterns often feels more uncomfortable than remaining within them. Personal growth can be so painful because it can make us ashamed and humiliated to face our own darkness. But the goal of personal growth is the journey out of dark emotional patterns which cause us pain to those which cause us peace.
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personal-growth
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Marianne Williamson |
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and seeing that face, touching it and loving it in ourselves and others, is the experience of God. It is our divine humanness. It is the high we all seek.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Our species is in trouble because we fight too much. We fight ourselves, each other, our planet, and God. Our fear-ridden ways are threatening our survival. A thoroughly loving person is like an evolutionary mutation, manifesting a being that puts love first and thus creates the context in which miracles occur.
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Marianne Williamson |
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A Course in Miracles says we think we're going to understand people in order to figure out whether or not they're worthy of our love, but that actually, until we love them, we can never understand them. What is not loved is not understood. We hold ourselves separate from people and wait for them to earn our love, but people deserve our love because of what God created them to be. As long as we're waiting for them to be anything better, ..
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relationships
understanding
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Marianne Williamson |
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Forgiveness is a full time job, and sometimes very difficult. Few of us always succeed, yet making the effort is our most noble calling. It is the world's only real chance to begin again. A radical forgiveness is a complete letting go of the past, in any personal relationship, as well as in any collective drama.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Any person, economic system, or political establishment that fails to concern itself with the pain of others is out of alignment with spiritual truth.
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Marianne Williamson |
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The future is programmed in the present. To let the past go is to remember that in the present, my brother is innocent.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Our political challenges are mere symptoms of a deeper malaise and a deeper dysfunction. Humanity itself is being challenged to move on to the next stage of our evolution.
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Marianne Williamson |
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everyone we meet will either be our crucifier or our savior, depending on what we choose to be to them.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Making another person feel guilty will never build unity or goodwill; only blessing, not blaming, can do that. All judgment does is to shut people down emotionally and psychologically.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Similarly, if we want to be rid of fear, we cannot fight it but must replace it with love.
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Marianne Williamson |
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That's why the miracle is a shift in our own thinking: the willingness to keep our own heart open, regardless of what's going on outside us.
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Marianne Williamson |
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Love not only makes a crisis endurable; it makes it transformable.
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Marianne Williamson |
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We don't just need a progressive politics or a conservative politics; we need a more deeply human politics. We need a politics of love. Love is the angel of our better nature, just as fear is the demon of the lower self. And it is love, not fear, that has made us great. When politics is used for loveless purposes, love and love alone can override it. It was love that abolished slavery, it was love that gave women suffrage, it was love that ..
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Marianne Williamson |
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I said to myself, "Marianne. Next time you're down on your knees, why don't you just stay there?"
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Marianne Williamson |