Marianne Williamson - Love America

Full transcript: Marianne Williamson on London Real

5:26 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Marianne Williamson, the American spiritual teacher, lecturer and author of seven New York Times bestselling books, including A Return to Love and Reflections on the Principles of A Course in Miracles. This year you are traveling the USA on the Love America tour, a direct response to the current political climate. Here, you discuss how a revolution in consciousness will bring renewal, urging all Americans to return to our deepest values, love.

6:00 Brian Rose: Marianne, welcome back to London Real.

6:02 Marianne Williamson: Thank you so much for having me back.

6:04 Brian Rose: It’s great having you here. What brings you back to London? Why are you in Europe?

6:08 What’s going on with you lately?

6:10 Marianne Williamson: Well, my daughter lives in London, so I enjoy visiting for that reason, and while I’m here I often speak. I spoke this week for Alternatives over at Logan Hall, and I spoke in Paris this week as well. When I come back in October, I’ll be going also in speaking in Switzerland and in Spain as well as in London again, so I enjoy that.

6:30 Brian Rose: Obviously you’re always very busy.

6:32 I’m busy.

6:33 Brian Rose: Well, why are you always busy? Always traveling, and I just see so much of you out there.

6:39 Marianne Williamson: Well, in terms of my life and how I live my life, it’s not like I don’t take rest time. It’s not like I don’t spend, well, I think of as an appropriate amount of time in reflection and solitude that I think is necessary for any well-lived life.

6:57 You know, Blaise Pascal said every problem in the world can be traced to man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone, so I understand how important it is that you not always be out there doing it, that yin and yang is important and it’s important to me. So you know, you don’t see it necessarily on my website, and today she’s just at home you know, but those days exist.

7:25 Brian Rose: Yeah, most definitely. We’re two and a half years ago, a lot’s changed since then. What happened last two and a half years been like for you, for your country, my country too, for the world.

7:39 I mean if you had to kind of sum things up, what’s been happening?

7:45 Marianne Williamson: Obviously we’re in a time of great change, certainly in my country. I think it’s a time of crisis. Our democracy itself is being shaken to its core. There’s no guarantee that our democracy will survive this intact, but I believe that it will.

8:07 But that’s true of the human race. There’s no guarantee that we will survive our own self-destructiveness, but I believe that we will. I think that the very fact, though, that there is such peril globally, in terms of environmental issues and also in terms of our individual countries, in terms of environmental political, social, economic issues, the same thing being played out domestically as is being played out internationally, has also, I think, caused a kind of awakening, certainly in the United States it has.

8:38 Winston Churchill is to have said that you can always count on Americans to do the right thing after they have exhausted every other option. And often Americans are slow to wake up everybody in the world except us sometimes seems to know this. But I think it’s also true, and I think others in the world know this as well, that when we do wake up we slam it like nobody’s business. And I believe that’s going to happen here. We are going through a period of crisis, but I think it’s awakened a lot of people.

9:10 We have midterm elections in November, and I think we’re gonna show ourselves and the rest of the world who we are.

9:18 Brian Rose: You did a TED talk recently called The New American Story. Can you talk about what that story is, and why did you decide to start talking about that now?

9:28 Marianne Williamson: I think that if you pick up a novel and you just start reading at the middle of the novel, you can’t possibly understand the plot. You don’t know who the characters are.

9:40 You don’t know how they fit into the narrative. And when you don’t know your history, this is why we go to therapy: who your parents are, what’s your family history. You get a deeper understanding of yourself, and this is why a nation, in order to understand itself deeply, needs to understand its history. Well, in America I think one of the core issues that has led to the crisis that we’re in has been a failure on the part of the American education system to educate people about civics and history the way we need to be in order to be responsible for our democracy and for our country, and I think a lot of Americans need to be reminded of our story.

10:25 Many people in the United States think it’s all rah-rah, America’s great, and have no listening for the terrible mistakes that we’ve made in our nation’s history and that we’re making now, but other people only want to focus on the terrible things that have happened and have no listening or are happening, and have no listening for the good things we’ve done. We’re a decent people. You know, all in the nation is a group of individuals, individuals that, you know, there’s a darkness in here, there’s a light in here.

10:58 So America has always been this tension. On the one hand, we were established on the most enlightened principles that have ever been foundational to do to the beginning of the nation. At the same time, 41 signers of the Declaration of Independence, which was a majority of them, were themselves slave owners. So from the very beginning we’ve been in this tension between these enlightened principles on which we purport to stand and the fact that we have often been the greatest transgressors against those principles: slavery, genocide of Native Americans, institutionalized white supremacy, segregation, denial of rights to gay Americans, denial of rights to women, oppression of women.

11:40 But I think it’s important as important as it is to identify those things, it is equally important to identify with those who solved those problems. So yeah, we had slavery and we had abolition. We had the denial of rights to women and we had waves of feminism and women’s suffrage. We had institutionalized white supremacy and segregation, and we had the civil rights movement. We had the denial of rights to gay people, and we had the Human Rights Campaign and the marriage equality movement.

12:10 So I think that it’s important right now for us to hold. That’s what this time demands his deep thinkers, mature thinkers, who can hold that juxtaposition. And I believe in the United States what we need is for us, as a generation, to know this is a larger narrative. It’s a continuing narrative that our political history is one in which generation after generation there has been this struggle there has been this tension between those who have taken very seriously the principles on which we stand, but possibilities for self- actualization that are afforded by a democracy, the significance of that not just for our country but to humanity.

12:50 And there have been those who would actually decrease our national commitment to those principles and would really have a sort of what has happened subconsciously revert to basically what is an aristocratic paradigm, where opportunity and wealth and resources of various kinds are basically held in the hands of the very few at the expense of the many. This is an assault on the foundation of democracy. What I think is important for Americans to know right now, it seems to me, is that this is not the first time we’ve had this struggle, but let’s not be the first generation to wimp out on doing what it takes to put this country back on track.

13:33 We’ve swerved before. We’ve swerved from democratic principles before, in all the instances that I stated, and American capitalism has not always been centered in its own ethical meaning. So this is not the first time American capitalism has had a few things to answer for, but the point is over time, as Churchill was saying, we do tend to self-correct, and we’re living at one of those times where the challenge to American citizenry is to self-correct because we have taken a swerve.

14:07 We’ve taken a serious swerve, but our history and our legacy shows that at times when this has happened before, Americans rose up and did what it took to get us back on track, and I believe that we will again.

14:20 Brian Rose: Can you tell me how you felt when Trump was elected, and maybe the few months after that? And I know it’s simplifying it, but you know, is he a reflection of us in some way, or of this part of our American story?

14:34 Marianne Williamson: Well, as much as anything else, I think that the Trump phenomenon is a reflection of the fact that too many Americans have chosen to be disengaged from the political process.

14:45 This did not come out of nowhere. There have been too many layers, year’s election cycles, where some of the best and the brightest in America just kind of checked out from the political process, and you know, as the French say, if you don’t do politics, politics will do you. Well, it’s done us now. So I think, as I said before, a lot of people have woken up. A lot of people were in deep shock.

15:12 I was not in deep surprise. I think many people were deep, more concerned, and I was one of them, because I knew that millions of Americans were living, and had been living for a long time, in deep economic despair, and there were only two major candidates who really spoke to that. So I felt there was going to be a cry of despair that would result in a kind of populist revolution of sorts. The only question was whether it was going to be an authoritarian populism or a progressive populism.

15:59 It was a kind of perfect storm, the 2016 election. But once again we’re way too close to the cliff, but we haven’t fallen over yet, and I believe in the midterms in 2018 and certainly in the presidential race of 2020, Americans are going to lay it down and put this country, my country, back on track.

16:22 Brian Rose: You know, last time we talked about Trump and it was, you know, in early 2016, so you know we didn’t really know what was gonna happen yet, and you said he has a realness that’s obvious that people are drawn to, where the politicians they never give, and you were already kind of identifying that.

16:45 Marianne Williamson: Okay, there’s something going on that people are engaging with, and you know there’s an authenticity there, but, you know, I don’t, you know, if somebody’s authentically something that none of us would respect. I don’t see where we should respect the authenticity, but I do think that he has created both the possibility as well as the necessity of breaking out of some old patterns. I think some grenades had to be thrown into the system, but he’s throwing grenades into places that should not be bombed, and it’s very disturbing to see some of the threats to not only traditional norms but some traditional norms we should be proud of.

17:38 There are the norms of democracy, freedom of the press, respect for the vote itself. So we’re in mid crisis, and pray for us. Mm-hmm.

17:52 Brian Rose: Has politics turned into kind of a celebrity contest? I mean, is this never going back the other way, where it’s gonna be about the headlines and the Twitter followers?

18:10 Marianne Williamson: Well, I hope not. You know, when I was a child the same company was not allowed to own the television station and the radio station and the newspaper, because there was a far greater respect and an understanding of the need for diversification in the media and the diversification of opinions. Those firewalls that kept sales from journalistic responsibility fell down in the 80s and the 90s, and now you have this corporate conglomeration. The media in America, looking back at the 2016 election, many in the mainstream media know that they have blood on their hands, know that they treated this like a joke, like it was a clown, like a carnival barker, did not treat this seriously in the way it should have been.

19:08 They thought they were covering a horse race. It was almost funny and profitable, and profitable, that’s exactly right, because early in the campaign, in the primary season, Bernie Sanders had as many people at his rallies as Donald Trump, Pettis at his, but it was this wall-to-wall coverage. I do think that the American media realizes it’s the depth of its irresponsibility, and I believe in many ways is trying to make up for that. Now there is a seriousness in the air.

19:42 But now, what was the actual question? Cuz now I care about what kind of like the celebrity.

19:48 Brian Rose: You know, yeah, is it about headlines and Twitter followers, and do we want to see celebs and not politicians?

19:56 Marianne Williamson: Well, the social media aspect, of course, and this isn’t any more true of the United States than it is of England or anywhere. This social media, it’s the whole invention of the internet.

20:08 I think will one day be looked back on as fundamentally transformative as the invention of the printing press. It has changed everything. It’s not just the dissemination of information, it’s how we process information. So, and it’s like a Wild West out there, but I think that there is the stirrings of an awakening, not just in my country, all over the world, that if we’re not careful this will continue to eat away at some very precious aspects of our humanity.

20:45 It’s sucking some life force out of us when we’re not even talking to each other so much as we’re talking to a screen, and when our children are growing up counting clicks and being concerned about how many clicks they got, more than goodness and ethics and personal impeccability and nobility and wisdom, when those just become quaint, almost peripheral issues. But I think there’s a sense amongst many people that something’s gone too far, and I’ve had personal crises. Most of us have.

21:28 We’ve talked, your, if you survive it you’re more noble on the other side, you’re more compassionate on the other side, you’re more humble on the other side, you’re more responsible on the other side. And I think that that’s true of a nation as much as for an individual. I think Americans are a decent people. We’re all decent people. I think America has shadows that where we should not be proud of, but like I said, we have a legacy of owning our mistakes in the past, and I think there are many people in the United States working very hard to do that now.

22:12 We have terrible issues: wealth inequality, we have terrible issues with criminal justice, mass incarceration. We have terrible issues with racial justice in the United States, environmental issues, political issues obviously. But this race for the best of ourselves, this contest for the best of ourselves, it’s far from over.

22:35 Brian Rose: You’re pretty fired up in that TED talk. You know, you’re very also.

22:40 You mentioned earlier, sister, listen, Burke, you know, you, I’m sure you know, you have a lot of permission in Berkeley, California, to lay it down. The way this is even a duty maybe in Berkeley, but you know, you’re passionate about this and you know, the Love America tour, you know, it embodies that passion. Where did this come from? When did you think, okay, I’m gonna do this, I’ve got to do this, and what is it?

23:07 Marianne Williamson: I think love of one’s country, whether it’s the country of your birth or country your adopted homeland, is an important part of righteous living.

23:16 Who are you if you don’t stand on principles? What does life mean if we don’t stand for something? And I think that’s true of a nation as much as it is true of an individual. A nation has to stand for something. Great Britain stands for something.

23:36 The United States stands for something. These countries matter. I mean, all countries matter, but when you, when you’re talking about advanced democracies and they have a profound responsibility to the rest of the world. These, you know, that’s the problem with this society in which we’ve all become insulted 24 hours a day by ultimately unimportant things. As soon as you have to say, whoa, what’s really important?

24:06 You know, Martin Luther King has to have said, your life begins to end on the day you stop talking about things that matter, and nobody can determine for you whether or not you choose to live a life based on important things. And if what’s happening, if you’re an American and you’re not dealing with what’s happening in our country, did I who are you, you know,

24:27 Brian Rose: really trying to get people to re-engage?

24:30 Marianne Williamson: I’m not trying to get anyone to do anything. I don’t see that it’s important.

24:34 I don’t think of my… I never think of myself as trying to get a message out. I’m trying to get a message in. I don’t think that I’m any more fired up than everybody else. I know I’m just fired up when the cameras are on and the lights are on, maybe a little more often than many people, but the fire in my belly is the fire in the belly of millions of people in the United States today.

24:53 I don’t have anything special going on. I just, I’m not gonna be quiet.

25:00 Brian Rose: And what is this tour like? What happens on it?

25:04 Marianne Williamson: Well, what happened for me, as for many people, I felt that in the 2016 election fear and bigotry and some of the worst aspects of the American character had been harnessed for political purposes.

25:22 Now that doesn’t mean that everybody who voted for Trump was coming from that place. I don’t believe that, but I do believe that he did harness those things for political purposes, but that’s not the American that I know. And I know a loving America. I know a decent America. I know a creative America.

25:44 The issue is that the worst of our national character has been harnessed for political purposes, and the best of our political, of our national character needs to be harnessed for political purposes, and a conversation harnesses energy, as you know. That’s what your show is. You take a conversation and you have it publicly, and it takes it, the molecules change, it becomes a field. It’s more than just words. It becomes a container.

26:19 Other people join their thoughts. Other people can think about the things you talk about. There might be a yes that they have around it. They might have a no, but it’s a meaningful conversation. Right?

26:30 And I would think with your, with this program, if the value is in the conversation, not that you’re trying to get anyone to think this way or to think that way, but just can we all think more deeply, please? Because I believe in people. I believe in the wisdom of people. And that’s really the founding of my country, was based on the idea that the governance of a great nation could be placed in the hands of the average person, who, if the average person has education, of their critical thought processes and a free press and free speech, so that there’s an exchange of information that they can be relied upon to govern a great nation.

27:10 And that’s the democratic principle that is now at the core of all the great democracies. But when the TV’s on all the time, the social media is going all the time, we’re missing out on something that you have dedicated your professional life to. And then I dedicated my professional life to the power of a conversation about things that matter, things that are real, that is just human beings talking, and that’s, that gets to the root of things. What’s happening a lot with our politics, certainly in the United States, is people are trying to take a withered plant, which is our democracy, and bring it back to life by watering the leaves.

27:51 I think you need to water the roots, and that has to do with how human beings feel and what human beings are thinking. And it’s not that anyone has a monopoly on truth. I don’t, who does? But just the sharing of information, having the conversation. I remember Werner Erhard, the founder of est, said you can live your life out of circumstances, or you can live your life out of a vision.

28:20 And when circumstances are bleak, it’s very important to have a vision of possibility that lies on the other side of that. That’s what the abolitionists had. Here was slavery, but they had a vision of abolition, women who had no rights, no legal right to vote or to own property of their own, but there was the vision of suffrage, there was the vision of feminism, institutionalized white supremacy and segregation, but there was a vision of an American South that was not in the grip of white supremacy.

28:59 You’ll always have to have a vision of what’s possible on the other side of dire circumstances. And you, by articulating the vision, you’ve forged the synapses. You forge a kind of ideational container into which we can pour our energies to co-create, that allows us to co-create, to invoke that possibility. And I think that’s what we need now. We’re in many of our countries.

29:32 We’ve been relatively spoiled. We haven’t had to struggle for what we wanted, it came pretty easy. So I feel, I felt, in the United States that our musculature, the muscular desert, that enables us to stand up and say no, we’re not going there, we’ll go on there, we’re not doing that. Authoritarian thing, we’re democracy. It’s the problem.

29:55 It’s not just the threats to our democracy. The problem is not just an authoritarian impulse. The problem is the cynicism, which is just an excuse for not helping, and the kind of weariness. And I’m too traumatized to deal with this. No, no, no, no, no.

30:10 You think the people who walked across the bridge in Selma weren’t traumatized? That’s what we need now. It’s the strength of character to respond to our circumstances. So the problem is not just the circumstances. The problem is when we fail to respond.

30:24 That’s what response-ability means. And I think having a deeper conversation about these things helps to harness those energies, whether it’s an individual going through a crisis. I mean, where would we be without the people who gave us a good talking to when we were down?

30:38 Brian Rose: And you ask people to kind of look inside themselves, whereas a lot of people, you know, in this political environment, are like, look at this, and this is wrong, and this is wrong. But you’ve always asked people to look inside themselves.

30:51 Marianne Williamson: Well, everything going on out there is a product of what’s going on in here. So hard to explain to people. All right, well, I think it’s pretty obvious, though, once you want, you look at it. I don’t so much explain it to people, just point out what I believe is obvious. As I said before, this crisis we’re going through, an American democracy would not have happened had so many of us not been looking the other way for a very long time.

31:14 Can you leave your house, the door is unlocked and the windows unlocked, for a long, long time and expect a thief not to enter? You know, you have to take care of your health. You have to proactively take care of your health. You can’t just wait, or not take care of your health, not take care of your nutrition, not take care of exercise, not take care of the things that proactively cultivate health, and then just hope when the inevitable illness comes that you can, through external remedies, allopathic means, suppress and eradicate all the symptoms.

31:49 We’re learning that now about democracy. We’re learning about peace. You have to cultivate democracy. If you don’t proactively cultivate your democracy, what are you so shocked when undemocratic forces, or all of a sudden, are eating it up, eating at it? And I think that’s what people realize.

32:07 I believe that America will get to the other side of this, but we’re going to have to be different people. We’re going to have to include citizenship as part of simply what we think it means to be a responsible, mature adult. And I think we have to have a greater dedication to being responsible, mature adults, or this kind of thing will happen again. So this is a time of great personal transformation as well as political transformation. If it is not a time of personal transformation, rethinking, thinking deeply about the part that all of us might have played in whatever way, thinking about the ethical transgressions, the compromise with public morality, that is as important as compromises with private morality, that led to all this, our making of money a kind of false god, are looking at corporate profits like they’re the be-all and the end-all of what it means to form a good society, as opposed to the health and welfare of our own children.

33:11 If we don’t take on those deeper questions, then even if we quote-unquote fix things on the outside, these symptoms, just like with the disease, will just morph and they’ll be back around again.

33:22 Brian Rose: Yeah, let’s talk about that worship of money. I mean, I had my own struggles with that. I was in banking for 40 years, and following that, what I called the American Dream. I, I just, as a kid, I was always taught that that was it.

33:35 The money is when you got the respect and everything was solved, and I went down a really dark, deep hole. And yet the country was kind of founded on that. “Go West, young man.” And it, you know, okay, not founded on that, but it was this place where that’s what people did. They built fortunes.

33:50 And you know, Trump being elected was kind of a weird byproduct of the vision of that, or a symptom. Is the irony there is we don’t have a stack, so it turns, we don’t even know, right? Oh, you don’t even know. Further irony is, yeah, it’s this, the image of that. Yeah.

34:04 Brian Rose: And so and so I always can you ever separate America from?

34:07 Marianne Williamson: Well, yes, because the fact is that America was not that. It is that has never been the American dream. That is a distortion of the idea of the American dream. The American Dream is the dream of possibility.

34:16 It’s the dream of human possibility, that we can create a society in which the vast majority of people, and ultimately the hope is all people, are unshackled by material conditions that would otherwise keep them from being able to embody and manifest their god-given potential. That is the American dream. Now, part of our ability to soar and to manifest our god-given potential is the ability to create wealth. But wealth creation is just one aspect of the manifestation of the higher possibilities of our humanity.

34:49 And if we see wealth creation in the terms of money as the primary factor in the manifestation of our greatness, then we are compromised ethically. That is not the American dream. And I’m glad that I was not brought up with that. I was, you know, there’s nothing holy about what happens when money stops circulating. I was brought up, I think, with a very healthy attitude towards money.

35:14 I’ve been very blessed by the free-market system. I’ve been very privileged. I’ve sold a few books. I, I’m an entrepreneur. I have online classes, and some, and all of that.

35:26 The beauty of, I’m very aware viscerally of the beauty of the free market when, when you’re in that club. The problem in America today is not enough people can get into it. If you have children who by the age of eight already can’t read, because they were so failed by the American public education system, then you have prison builders who know that it is statistically a good economic investment to go on and build a prison bed, because that’s the trajectory of probability for that child.

35:59 That’s immoral. That’s what I meant before about public moral issues. So I think that, while we have an entrepreneurial spirit in the United States, then we, and we love that. You want to see entrepreneurialism. You want to see creativity.

36:14 You want to see the can-do spirit. Look at any American kindergarten, or any kindergarten anywhere, Great Britain, anywhere else. But the point is, if you do not, particularly, by the way, in a child before the age of eight, if you do not cultivate the opportunities, not just education as we think of it, like just intellectual, but the social and the emotional and the cultural and the artistic, the aesthetic, all the things which lead to the full flowering of human being.

36:43 If you don’t take care of that in the life of a child, then the child is not given the opportunity to be all that they can be. So what has happened in the United States over the last few decades is that the vast majority of our material resources had been funneled off, siphoned off, whether it is opportunity for wealth creation, opportunity for education, opportunity for health care, opportunity for all the things which diminish economic and personal anxiety, without which nobody can flower, into the hands of fewer and fewer people. And Louis Brandeis, the late Supreme Court justice Louis Brandeis, said you can have large amounts of money concentrated in the hands of a very few, or you can have democracy.

37:32 You cannot have both. Our country was founded in repudiation of the aristocratic monarchy call system. That was the whole point. That God did not, you know, when we were kids we read about the Divine Right of Kings. Well, the idea of the founding of American democracy was the idea, and this is the American dream.

37:51 The guy created all men equal, and that guy gave all men inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Now, whether in a country like England, where it was a gradual transformation into a democracy, or in the case of the United States, an actual revolutionary overthrow of the aristocratic system. The point is that’s where history has taken us, and in the United States, in ways that are very concerning to many of us, we seem to be heading backwards once again.

38:21 Though this story is not over. Right, right. And we will, we will push through this.

38:26 Brian Rose: Okay, tell me about race. I mean, I was just in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

38:30 Yes, and I ran the Ironman race and I cycled through big parts of Georgia. Yeah, which was the Deep South. And recently I watched a documentary on Bob Kennedy on Netflix, and it showed 1968 and all of this massive turmoil and the civil rights movement and what was going on, Martin Luther King, and then we kind of see the state of the art today. Maybe it’s embodied by that, this is America video. You know, something very powerful that’s showing that, wow, there’s some major problems still going on here, and that’s tracking a hundred years later and 50 years later.

39:04 And you know, where are we at today? And what are we conversations, do we need to have to move forward?

39:09 Marianne Williamson: You know, when people ask me, like, what’s going on with America? I kind of used to say what you’re saying now. It’s like there’s a really long story here, and it’s really complicated.

39:18 Brian Rose: Yeah, and some of my crew went down there and they looked at it, and they were like, well, this isn’t what I thought it was gonna be. Everyone was really nice, and I saw this, and but there’s all sorts. There’s an old story there.

39:31 Marianne Williamson: Right now, well, it’s a story that is not completed. In 1919, 60s, there was a civil rights movement.

39:36 There was a great impulse towards healing in 1968, Richard Nixon was elected president, and there was a senator from New York who, at that time, I don’t think was a senator yet, but he worked in the Nixon administration, I think. Anyway, his name was Patrick Moynihan, and he had a term, benign neglect, and that’s what he recommended to Nixon as where we should go with race relations at that time. Just kind of like let that one sit for a while. And what started to happen, slowly but surely, is that we moved backwards.

40:11 By the 1990s, with the rather draconian sentencing laws, we had the beginning of mass incarceration. We now have more black men in prison than we had enslaved in 1864. We have terrible racial disparity in our sentencing. For instance, we know that blacks and whites do drugs roughly the same rate, but blacks are punished at much, much more severely than whites are, and you don’t have police going through white neighborhoods checking on to see if there are drugs.

40:46 Recently, in the last few years, the Supreme Court has struck down some aspects of the Voting Rights Act, which was core to the civil rights legislation that was passed after the death of Dr. Martin Luther King. And he said, well, we don’t, you know, the Supreme Court said we don’t need that protection of voting rights for African Americans anymore because the South is different. And of course, as soon as those parts of the law were struck down, state after state started initiating what are essentially voter suppression projects that we’re dealing with today.

41:21 If Lincoln had lived, I believe things would have been different. You know, everybody knows the second inaugural, with malice towards none, with charity for all. He saw the American South. He didn’t want to treat the South as a vanquished enemy. He wanted to treat the American South as a family member that had come back home.

41:42 His successor, after he was assassinated, the Vice President was Andrew Johnson, who was a southern sympathizer. It was after the Civil War that things like the Ku Klux Klan were instituted. Now, you were talking before about external versus internal remedy. So the stroke of a presidential pen on a mass population and the 13th and 14th amendment could abolish an evil institution, a racist institution of slavery, but those external remedies could not abolish racism.

42:15 So in a very real way, racism burrowed even more deeply into the southern psyche after the Civil War. Then you had American troops, federal troops, that remained until 1877 to make sure that slavery itself was not reinstituted. And as soon as those troops left, you had this emergence. They couldn’t reinstate the external institution of slavery, but the terrible Jim Crow laws, the lynchings, etc. and that white supremacy, that horribly institutionalized white supremacy throughout the American South, did not, was not challenged until the civil rights movement.

42:54 So it’s a relationship that has never been completed. Now, interestingly enough, there were reparations promised at the time, forty acres and a mule. And right after the war some former slaves received that acreage, and then it was taken away from them during that period of reconstruction. I’m aware, you know, I’m a Jew, and I’m aware that after World War Two, Germany did full Maricopa, not kind of sort of, man, not well, it wasn’t me, it was my you know, wasn’t me.

43:31 And that included roughly 89 billion dollars of reparations to Jewish organizations. By the 20th century, the idea of reparations is considered simply a civilized notion. You can’t undo the Holocaust. You can’t undo slavery, but it is a civilized notion to seek to make financial recompense for a wrong to people. And so I hope that the conversation of reparations will become considered much less fringe in the United States, because it should: one hundred billion, two hundred billion dollars, which once again is a fraction.

44:15 We spend seven hundred every year on the military. Defense, to say to an esteemed council of African-American leaders and scholars, and so forth, over the next 10 years, 20 years, whatever is worked out, spend this money in forms of economic and social revitalization.

44:32 Brian Rose: However you do, you compensate the African leaders, or the people themselves?

44:37 Marianne Williamson: Oh, well, it would be the council of Africa, of African-American elders, as it were.

44:42 Brian Rose: Is that, I never really heard that conversation happen, because it has been for the most part kept within pockets of African American society.

44:51 Marianne Williamson: I think it very much needs to burst out of African American society, and that’s why I’m saying it right now.

44:57 Brian Rose: It feels like that’s coming. I remember when I first came to London. Swiss Bank finally made a settlement. Thank you for holding money.

45:04 Marianne Williamson: Yeah, that’s exactly why she was populated over to.

45:07 Brian Rose: And I was like, wow, that’s fifty years later and they’re doing the cutting of the check.

45:13 Marianne Williamson: Exactly, exactly, because it is understood and accepted that this needs to be handled. When you’re talking about two, 300 years of slavery, you’re talking about building the entire economy of the American South. What’s built on slavery, and what happened at the end of the war, because that acreage in the mule was not given.

45:32 So if you had to think about what that 40 acres and a mule would have meant, it would have meant that people have been for hundreds of years then tilling the soil and working in a great agricultural society would have had a chance to do it for themselves. All of a sudden you’re free. Where are you supposed to go? You still don’t have any way to enter into the economy you’re in. If so, if you’re in the South, you’re, you’re mainly surrounded by people who used to be your slave owners.

46:01 They weren’t exactly necessarily welcoming, and so many fled to the North. There was no, there was no place for people to go. And so you have these, these continued strains of what is basically racist manifestation that has still not been adequately addressed. Now, I don’t want to minimize the strides that have been made, because I think that would be a dishonor to our ancestors, both in terms of abolition and in terms of the civil rights movement and many other things.

46:36 I’m not saying that we have not come a long way, and yet it needs to be pointed out we still have a long way to go. America, as I see it, is in a situation where if you are a genius, if you’re an Oprah Winfrey, if you’re a Magic Johnson, if you’re a Tyler Perry, if you’re a Skip Gates, if you’re a genius, talent outs as long as there is the ability. So I think it could be argued that there is a way. Now, you know, it’s not like Bessie Smith being denied, you know, great singer, then denied hospital care and dying because of it.

47:19 But that doesn’t mean you’ve healed racism, and that doesn’t mean you’ve healed racist strains with your institution. The point is not just that those who are really brilliant can make it out of those horrible conditions. It should be that no one should even have to deal with those horrible conditions, no matter who they are, and in every American kindergarten there is that potential brilliance, American, whether they are black or white, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Hindu, agnostic, atheist.

47:53 That’s the American Dream, that no matter who we are, we have a chance, no matter who we are. And some people, which is, and this is basically an aristocratic paradigm, see this meritocracy issue. Well, if somebody’s really brilliant, they’ll make it. That’s undemocratic. To say, well, if they’re really brilliant, don’t make it.

48:19 If they’re really talented, they’ll make it. That’s, that’s wrong. That’s wrong. And who’s to say, when, when you see all these little children in high school, in kindergarten, and there, and when you look at some of the conditions of some of American children now? We’re not on race with just any American child, but particularly in disadvantaged communities, and they are so traumatized by social and economic conditions.

48:44 Who’s to say who might have demonstrated brilliance but never had the opportunity to, because the first eight years of life were so hard?

48:56 Brian Rose: What about immigrants? On that same note, because that used to be the kind of heart of America, of Amul America, and

49:06 Marianne Williamson: this is part of the scapegoating that our current administration has come up with. Any time you see an authoritarian leader, this is part and parcel of an authoritarian paradigm, the scapegoating of one particular group, and it has very, very dangerous implications and involves a kind of dehumanizing.

49:31 Every group of people has its shadow side, but the shadow side of people is not who they are. And as you said, it’s part of the great. I don’t, what I don’t understand, unless your, your, your ancestors came over here on slave ships, or obviously they were not coming over seeking a better life. If you, if your ancestors didn’t come over here on a slave ship, who do you think your ancestors were, except immigrants seeking a better life? And a mind, were so, this is a horrible undercutting of the underpinnings of the greatness of American society.

50:11 This current demonizing of immigrants, it’s showing itself, of course, with the attitude on this, on our southern border. I think a lot of Americans don’t realize that it’s defense contractors who would be building this wall. Hello? And also it’s showing itself with the way that America is taking a fraction of the number of refugees that other advanced democracies are taking during the worst humanitarian refugee crisis that we’ve had since World War Two.

50:41 They’re about, they’re over 60 million displaced people on this planet today.

50:46 Brian Rose: Yeah, I’ve got young kids. I’ve got a fourteen-year-old stepdaughter and two young boys, one and two years old. What do I need to look out for, you know, in the next 10 years, as they grow up online and as they grow up in schools and in a new reality? Because you quite, you quick, you like to talk about these kids.

51:08 Brian Rose: You mentioned kindergarteners a bunch of just now. I guess they are the future. This is the new conversation, right?

51:15 Marianne Williamson: What they hear, we now know sociologically and neurologically, how much is established in those first eight years of life. I can’t know any more than you can, or any of us can, what’s coming down the pike over the next 10 years.

51:28 But we can know, once again, don’t worry so much about the sickness, cultivate health. So for you and your wife, you’re being present with those children, being really deeply present, particularly what we know about the first five years. That’s what matters. If we fortify our children with deep human connection and values, and what amounts to ethics, what you wouldn’t use the word ethics with a four-year-old, but basically you’re teaching them right and wrong.

52:02 You’re teaching versus wrong. You’re teaching them reliance on an internal power, whether you see this as religious or spiritual or in secular terms. So no matter what’s coming later, what matters is where we are with our children now. In the United States I feel like we have an epidemic of under-parenting, and part of it is that we’ve become, for many of us, a kind of Peter Pan generation. To many of us didn’t grow up, fooling ourselves.

52:32 So the problem with not growing up fully is that you’re not the grown-up in the room when your own kids are growing up, and that’s why we have this crisis in childhood. So this crisis in adulthood, crisis in maturity. You know, if you look at, I was talking to an audience here in London the other night. You see, keep calm and carry on. It’s like on a coffee mug, or it’s on a tray.

52:53 You know, it’s like a cute keep calm and carry on. At the time it was not cute. It was the Battle of Britain. They bombed us last night. They are going to bomb us again tonight.

53:11 We have sent our small children into the countryside, and we are hoping they are taken care of. Keep calm and carry on. Think what our parents’ generation and our grandparents’ generation, for some of these kids now their great-grandparents’ generation, demonstrated in terms of character.

53:33 Brian Rose: So the problem was Hitler.

53:35 Marianne Williamson: Problem, absolutely.

53:36 Hitler was a problem, but the story is not just that Hitler was a problem. The story is the generation that stood up and handled the problem, and that’s where we need to be concentrating on right now. We need to be concentrating on the development of our own moral character, our own, own capacity to rise to the occasion, both, both individually and collectively. We need deep thinkers right now more than anything else, and that’s what the value of a deep conversation comes in.

54:10 We can’t know what will be assaulting or challenging our children in the future, but we know that our job is to prepare them to be adults who will handle whatever it is, because through the grace of God we can. That is my belief. And helicopter parenting, parenting is not being present. It’s very meta. Lina, yes, I agree with that too, and that is going on.

54:34 Brian Rose: That I agree. Okay, and their access to information. I mean, you know, did they always have access to information, or is it now to another level?

54:42 Marianne Williamson: Well, you can’t even compare social media to anything that happened before. Access to information is a good thing.

54:49 Hello, libraries are a good thing. The printing press is a good thing. The problem is not access to information. What we have today is information overload, and we have, because this goes back to, at least in my country, when you have corporate profits being the bottom line for journalistic standards, too often, which is really the decimation of journalistic standards, you are fed an ultimately important piece of news and something which is extremely important, at the same time, in the same font, same size on your screen.

55:22 So what’s happening in my country is that there is so much assault by ultimately unimportant things, that serious crisis to your democracy, from foreign power assaulting your democracy, your own leaders in many cases, and people in the brain. It’s a scrambling of information. It’s the scrambling of information that happens then, because the traditional gatekeepers, which can only happen when people take their journalistic responsibilities and their ethical responsibilities, whether it has to do with business, education, what has become of us, you know, even in the American corporation.

56:02 There was a time. So this would apply not only to media corporations, pictorial corporations. It applies to fossil fuel companies, to chemical companies, to Big Pharma, to, attend to everything. There was a time when it was understood that a corporation had a social responsibility to more stakeholders than just corporate shareholders. You know, your bottom line should not just be short-term fiduciary gain, short-term monetary gain of the corporate shareholder.

56:34 Shareholders. There are many stakeholders. The whole community is a stakeholder. The employees are a stakeholder. That the larger country is a stakeholder, and that’s why we have to face our idolatry, this false god of corporate profits.

56:49 But I think the good news is I don’t feel I’m shouting in the wilderness here. I’m one of many, many people not only saying these things, but more importantly, I’m one of many, many people understanding these things. The issue now is whether we will take this understanding, harness it for political purposes, and in 2018 and 2020 and beyond, do what we need to do, and that’s not only in our electoral decision-making, but in how we behave within business, how we behave within education, how we behave within the media, and so forth.

57:30 I think that just as every cell in the body has a sign, you know, one cell is assigned to the lungs and one cell is assigned to the heart, and one cell is assigned to the abdomen. I believe that we’re assigned on the level of our souls. You are assigned to do the show. Something in you, something in your soul, called you to do this program, and I and I think that whatever area we are in, you know, and then in the Old Testament when God told Moses, tell the Israelites I will make of you a priestly people.

58:01 The Israelites represents metaphysically all humanity, and we are meant to be priestly. We are meant to rise to the occasion. If you’re an educator, demonstrate the frequency of your consciousness and the impeccability of your behavior to the best of your ability. Demonstrate what’s possible in education. If you’re in politics, and politics is a collective assignment, if you’re in business, if you’re in medicine, if you’re in the media, demonstrate the highest possibility and don’t be tempted by the corporate whoredom that has become too often the order of our day.

58:35 That’s the revolution in consciousness that’s happening today, and it’s a dramatic time, and it represents a dramatic contest between some very lower energies within ourselves and the higher angels of our better nature, as Abraham Lincoln called them. I think that will be a tougher fight than any of them. I do, you know, from a spiritual perspective, the battle has already been won. Why? Well, the spiritual perspective, whether it’s the enlightenment of Buddha or the deliverance of the Israelites to the Promised Land, or Jesus resurrecting, all the great religious traditions, both those I just mentioned and others.

59:18 It’s not over till the happy part. It’s not a happy part. It’s not over. So whether you’re using terminology like enlightenment, resurrection, Promised Land, self-actualization, mental health, the evolutionary impulse is in the direction of those things. We learned as children that any species that begins to demonstrate behavior that is maladaptive for its survival will either change, mutate, move in a different direction, or it will go extinct.

59:49 What we’re talking about now is democracy. What we’re talking about is the human race. Even we’re beginning to exhibit behavioral patterns that are maladaptive to the survival of our democracy, or in the case of our environmental behavior, in our, the fact that we fight too much on this planet. International, international relations. The fact that we have these nuclear bombs, and obviously there are too often in the hands of people who do not demonstrate the wisdom and sense of deep responsibility necessary, threatens the survival of the human race.

1:00:18 We will now change, we will evolve, or our survival on this planet is not guaranteed. But all the great religious and spiritual traditions tell us that ultimately love prevails. Love always prevails. It has always prevailed. The only question is how much suffering we caused ourselves first.

1:00:51 Even, you know, you here in the environmentalists say, you know, the worst that could happen is the planet will be fine. The worst that could happen is that it will have to throw off this predator species for about 250,000 years. Well, there’s nothing to laugh out there, because if that were the direction that things went, the amount of human and other species suffering, it is unimaginable. But that’s what a nuclear catastrophe, for instance, would be. But even then, after those 250,000 years, theoretically.

1:01:32 So the issue is, are we going to choose wisdom or self-destruction? That’s what happens when any individual goes through a crisis. Which way you’re gonna go? You’re gonna self-destruct. You’re gonna wise up.

1:01:46 And now we are facing the exact same phenomenon collectively, and I think you and I both agree, and have seen in our lives, and have seen among not just our own communities, but have seen historically. Sometimes it’s the 11th hour, but as long as it’s not midnight.

1:02:05 Brian Rose: Yeah, there’s always hope. Talking about this dark side, you know, will you say that we all have this dark side? But when you tell that to most people, that kind of like, yeah but sometimes it’s hard for most people to say, okay, I have this dark side and it’s okay, and I’m gonna, you know, try to understand it and not judge it, and yet also choose love and choose these things.

1:02:31 But I know you’ve always talked about this and taught these concepts.

1:02:36 Marianne Williamson: I’ve had a 35-year career in the field of personal transformation. I always think people don’t usually come to me because things are going well. So in my conversation with people, nobody’s pretending, okay, that they didn’t sabotage themselves, undermined their good. And sometimes it’s what we did to ourselves, sometimes it’s what others have done to us.

1:03:03 When people get real, do we really deny that? Oh, maybe we do at cocktail parties. Maybe we minimize it when we’re talking, you know, in public, but deep in our hearts, where we go in therapy, were in religious ritual, ceremony, prayerfulness. We’re not a stupid species. We know better than to think there’s not a deep lovelessness that all of us are capable of.

1:03:39 Brian Rose: A Course in Miracles is something that you have taught and talked about for so long. It’s just fascinating to me that you continue to talk about this, because it must just always be so relevant, you know. And it’s interesting that it just seems like it rings so true to you, and you teach this to people. Why is why did that resonate so much with you? What is in there?

1:04:09 Marianne Williamson: Well, A Course in Miracles has no monopoly on truth. It’s not a religion. There’s no dogma, no doctrine. It’s based on universal spiritual themes that are at the core of all the great religious teachings and spiritual teachings and traditions of the world, but it is a psychological training that enables those of us who feel called to it to begin to operationalize and to actualize the principles which a lot of us embrace but kind of don’t know how to do. Okay, I should be more forgiving.

1:04:41 How do I do that? What are the mechanics? What are the internal dynamics? What are the inalterable laws of internal phenomena? Just that there are inalterable, discernible laws of external phenomena.

1:04:53 A Course in Miracles has, like I said, no monopoly on truth. It’s one out of many. There’s one truth spoken in many different ways, but A Course in Miracles is the teaching that has liberated me. You know, like I talked about being Jewish, there’s nothing in A Course in Miracles in terms of the universal spiritual themes that’s not in my religion, but my religious education when I was a child was such that abstract concepts and I think this is true of most people.

1:05:34 As he said, it looks like the course. It’s not like there’s anything in there that they didn’t learn in Sunday school, but knowing something abstractly and recognizing the psychological dynamics of actually experiencing those things is different. So everybody, you know, everybody responds with different books, different teachings. Like I said, one truth spoken in many ways, and A Course in Miracles was that for me, and continues to be that for me. Even, you know, spiritual practice, spiritual exercises, like physical exercise, you never get to stop, and it’s really the same thing.

1:06:14 Just like when you go to the gym, you’re strengthening your physical muscles so you can move, and if you don’t, your muscles are at the effect of physical gravity, and they, in that gravity, weakens you. It makes flabby your muscles. The same with spiritual exercise, but you are, you are honing your attitudinal muscles, and there is internal gravity, just like there’s external gravity. There’s internal gravity: cynicism, victimization, negativity, blaming everybody for your problems, laziness, procrastination, those things that just weaken you as a person and keep you from victory in your life and transcendence in your life and a life that works.

1:06:57 So you build your attitudinal muscles, just like your physical muscles. You strengthen them so you can move. You strengthen your attitudinal muscles so that you can achieve a kind of stillness that enables you not to be reactive but to be responsive in life. So you know, you never get to the point where you’ve been working out at the gym so you don’t need to do it anymore, because as soon as you stop working out or stop doing yoga, weight training, whatever you do, your muscles will weaken.

1:07:25 And same with meditation and prayer and forgiveness and atonement. If I’m not working at recognizing my own character defects, recognizing where I myself did not contribute to a situation, where I myself with the negative element, or I myself self-sabotage, where I myself undermined, where I myself wasn’t loving, where I myself was selfish, where I myself was controlling. If I’m not doing that constant work, right? And the same with forgiving other people.

1:07:52 If I’m choosing to hold on to what they did to me rather than knowing, in any given moment, what they did to me can have no power as long as I don’t take that thought with me. The universe constantly gives me an opportunity to begin again. You’re really learning the technique of forgiveness, that the problem, at a certain point, is not what someone did to you, but the fact that you’re carrying with you what they did to you. You know, in learning those principles and learning to practice them, is the difference between life where you’re constantly at the effect of the randomness and chaos of the world in which we live, which is at a height today, whether you are brought down by it or you rise.

1:08:36 And I think ultimately what any mature life realization is, is ultimately, it’s your choice whether you sink or whether you rise. Life’s not always easy for anyone, but life isn’t just about what happens to us. It’s about who we choose to be in the space of what’s happening to us, and that’s true whether it’s our individual circumstances or our collective circumstances. Not what’s happening, but who do we choose to be now that it’s already happened?

1:09:08 Brian Rose: You have a very powerful message, and at the same time you’re not afraid of mixing in religion and saying God and making those choices.

1:09:18 And you give a lot of your speeches in churches. Yeah, and you know that’s something I don’t see a lot of people doing. You know, most people say, I’m gonna leave that over here, not good for business, maybe not good for all these things. You’ve never made that choice. Also, I know you’re born in the United States, brought up in the United States, you live here now, we’re in Europe.

1:09:35 There does some tend to be a more secular, true, that between your sins. We, you know, you’re unique in America.

1:09:43 Marianne Williamson: Well, I, I do understand what you’re saying. Now, in the political sphere we have a tradition in the United States, as you do here, which is secular conversation, and I believe that as strongly as anyone does how important that is, because we are a religiously pluralistic society. People can be any religion they want or no religion.

1:10:06 So if I’m having a political transition, the politics, of course, that’s under assault too. But yeah, the founding principle is an extremely important constitutional principle. So if I’m having a political conversation, I don’t mix in the god stuff. Okay, as you would say, but if you’re asking me about the entirety of my career and my beliefs, which you did, then you’re right. I don’t, I don’t have a problem with that.

1:10:33 With the god word, I, what I do, because some people would just say the divine, and you’re gonna let it go. But you know what? If that is what is comfortable for them, that is what they should say. You know, I grew up, because many people have things associated with certain religious terms from childhood that are uncomfortable for them. I don’t have anything uncomfortable associated with those words from my childhood.

1:11:04 Brian Rose: What was your religious upbringing in Texas?

1:11:07 Marianne Williamson: Very conservative Jews, not conservative politically. In Judaism, there’s Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, and Orthodox Judaism. Jewish values, High Holidays. Certainly, certainly, High Holiday Jews.

1:11:23 Certainly we went to temple. Son, but she was going to temple. It is not the same as Christians going to church. It’s the values that are the core of the Jewish religion, and I was brought up by parents who demonstrated great values. You know, I was saying to my daughter the other day, the older I get, the better they look, my parents, and at the deepest level, values are the same.

1:11:50 And my mother had a friend, a very close friend who was a very religious Christian lady, and everybody, every time somebody did something wonderful, this woman would say but she’s such a good Christian, or he’s such a good Christian. One day my mother turned to her and went, “BJ, what do you think a good Jew is?” Because every time she’d say somebody was a good Christian, that’s what makes a good Jew, being a good person, being a loving person, ethical person.

1:12:20 And that’s the heart of all the great religious and spiritual teachings, which the ego would use to divide us by religious doctrine, but which the spirit would use to unite us because of the universality of those themes. So that’s what I talk about, is the universality of those themes, which you can see here.

1:12:40 Brian Rose: Like, what she’s Jewish, and wages, yeah, because there’s a, there’s a, there’s a non-denominational spiritual conversation going on today, but some people feel that they sort of threw away the baby with the bathwater, because they’re so afraid to use any of the terms at all, and sometimes those terms are deeply meaningful and psychologically relevant.

1:13:02 Marianne Williamson: My latest book was called Tears to Triumph, about depression, and about Buddhism particularly. I talked about Buddha and Moses and Jesus in relation to the issue of human suffering. We’re living at a time when there’s this medicalization of human despair, but there’s a normal spectrum of human despair that is not new. It’s not like the medical profession discovered it, and it is not a mental disease. Heartbreak, divorce, financial failure, financial loss, professional failure, losing someone that you love.

1:13:48 These things are very painful, but they’re not a mental illness, and too often they were treated pharmaceutically today, and we’re over-medicating very much so, because the baton went from organized religious institutions, where people hundreds of years ago looked for comfort and solace and hope. Then the baton sort of passed to psychotherapy, and now the baton is passed again, in many cases, to pharmacology, psychopharmacology, and to the point where it’s owned in the United States. It’s like a psychotherapeutic, psychopharmacological industrial complex, which I find very disturbing.

1:14:26 I’m not getting in their lane because I’m not talking about bipolar, schizophrenia, or obvious mental illnesses, which is certainly not my expertise, my purview, my education, my training. I’m talking about normal issues of human despair, because when you turn to that, it’s spiritual, and that has traditionally been called the dark night of the soul. And it’s not like the great religious and spiritual traditions don’t have anything to say about that. That’s what Buddha’s message is.

1:14:54 My message is that life is suffering. I have come to teach the cessation of suffering. In the Jewish religion, God sent Moses to deliver the Israelites because they were suffering as slaves in Egypt. And of course, in Christianity, the suffering of Jesus on the cross is the core, and God’s response to that. So I wanted to write that book to talk about the spiritual principles by which we address, and like I was saying earlier, it’s not just belief in God.

1:15:23 That’s not particularly meaningful. What matters is the experience of love as a transformative experience, a bomb on the human heart, on human circumstances, taking love and making it practical, not just expecting some divine force to do it for us. I mean, that divine force, by whatever you call it, whether you, you know, I, I like the way, in a, a they say, the God of your understanding can’t do for us what it can’t do through us. So the issue is not what we expected that force to do for us, but what perhaps that force is expecting us, who we need to be?

1:16:04 So many times these days people are saying my rights, my rights, when sometimes we need to talk a little more about my responsibilities, my responsibilities, our responsibilities as parents, our responsibilities as citizens, our responsibilities for democracy, our responsibilities as business people, our responsibilities as teachers. Our responsibilities. What’s our responsibility? That’s an adult conversation, and I think that’s what I meant. I mean, when I said we have a crisis of adult grownups.

1:16:34 Ask those questions. What is my responsibility? And when you have enough adults not asking that question, you have a breakdown, and that’s what we have now. These are big battles, going up against Big Pharma, going up against wealth disparity. These are big battles.

1:16:53 You know, I’m not, you know, I don’t think that I don’t think they’re scared of me. It’s a contest. I don’t know so much about a battle. I’d like to think it’s not a battle, but it’s certainly a contest, a contest of ideas. I believe that there are people who work for big pharmaceutical companies and every other great corporate enterprise who are unhappy when they see corporate profits placed before ethics, but they too are caught in this maelstrom.

1:17:38 So it’s not about demonizing individuals. Sometimes individuals have to be held to account, but it is about recognizing the immorality of institutional forces when money and corporate profits, or any kind of financial profits, are placed before ethical considerations and the health and well-being of the people of the world.

1:18:06 Brian Rose: Why do people love you?

1:18:08 Marianne Williamson: Well, I hope that people who love me love me because I love them. I think people love me, you feel I love them.

1:18:18 Brian Rose: Isn’t that what people love you for? Your children love you. Isn’t that why your family loves you, and they feel that you love them through everything that you’ve done?

1:18:28 Marianne Williamson: The last thirty or thirty thousand people who don’t love me, too, I know. Don’t give myself about any of that.

1:18:34 Brian Rose: What I mean, I met a bunch. You do, you know, I’m, you’re very unique.

1:18:38 Marianne Williamson: Well, thank you. Well, that’s very kind of you to say,

1:18:40 Brian Rose: and I mean, you meet these people in person, and you know, what’s common about these people? You know, is it, it is, and has that changed over the years?

1:18:48 You know, when you’re in Paris last week, is that different than the trip you made 20 years ago?

1:18:54 Marianne Williamson: There, you know, when you’re talking to people about things that matter, adult conversations and heartfelt conversations, it’s kind of like an AA meeting. You have a mogul sitting next to a homeless person. You know, you might be rich, you might be poor, but you’re just a drunk in here. When you’re talking about something like A Course in Miracles, you’re talking to people where we all really live, and I think that’s what we all yearn for.

1:19:24 People, you know, I, there was a time 20 years ago, certainly at the beginning of my career, which was longer ago than that, I have a lot of the things I talked about in my work. We’re like news to people. Those days are over. Everybody’s read the same books now. Everybody’s listened to the same tapes.

1:19:49 People don’t come to hear my lectures anymore to hear anything they don’t already know. If you come to hear someone talking about the things that I talked about, now it’s today, we’re all trying to access more deeply the principles by which that we do already know. You don’t have to tell a thinking American anymore. We got a problem. People know that now.

1:20:10 You know, I wrote a book 20 years ago called Healing the Soul of America. This summer it’s coming out, the 20th anniversary revised edition. 20 years ago, in 1997, I published a book. We got a problem with wealth inequality, got a problem with mass incarceration, got a problem, a big pharma got a problem, with, but racial justice, but it was like, why is she going on about those things today? It’s like everybody knows.

1:20:39 We do. People say in some of those situations that I talk about in that book, because I say we’re gonna have a catastrophe if we don’t wake up. Catastrophes coming, and some people say, how did you know? I’m trained as a metaphysician. I’m trained.

1:20:55 I always say, innate support groups. I used to say, I’m not your physician. Your physician knows about your disease. I’m a metaphysician, that means great in the physical. I know something about the forces, the internal forces that boosts the immune system.

1:21:09 So I’m trained, I’m disciplined to recognize cause and effect, and I know if there’s an internal cause, the effect is coming. It’s kind of like a little bit of cancer. So in the late 90s, whether it’s mass incarceration, wealth inequality, or so forth, if it’s happening a little bit and it’s unanswered, inertia means the tendency of the object to go in whatever direction it’s been moving in. Martin Luther King said there’s two kinds of peace: negative peace and positive peace.

1:21:40 Negative peace, he said, is where there’s no outright conflict, but there’s underlying tension and anxiety. Positive peace, he said, can only be predicated on brotherhood and justice. So everybody said in the late 90s, oh, we’re at peace, everything’s good. And I was saying, then doesn’t that depend on what neighborhood you’re in? Have you looked at some of the neighborhoods in this country?

1:22:02 Have you looked at some of the neighborhoods of the world? Because when you have large groups of desperate people, large groups of desperate people are going to do some desperate things. Large groups of desperate people are a national security risk. Large groups of desperate people will be vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces. So if you’re looking underneath the surface of things, I was already saying, wait, there’s way too much human suffering here.

1:22:27 There’s way too much unnecessary human suffering, and so because that’s what my eye is trained to see and to recognize, you’re born with that. And now I was important, I’m trained that that’s what, whether as a student of A Course in Miracles or anyone who does psychotherapeutic work, psycho-spiritual work, personal transformation work, it’s a way of looking at the world. It’s a way of extending your perception beyond the obvious. And like I said, if that’s what you deal with in people’s lives, and that’s what you do, and you see, wow, you continue to treat your wife like that, you’re gonna lose your wife.

1:23:09 You continue to be that irresponsible with your money, or lose your money. You know, it’s like when you’re dealing with what’s really going on in people’s lives, you realize every cause has an effect, every action has a consequence, and every inaction related to something that probably should be acted upon will also have a consequence.

1:23:29 Brian Rose: What are your daily practices that are like, you know, that are, they’re deal-breakers if you miss them? Like, how do you stay, you know, focused and engaged and all of that stuff?

1:23:40 Marianne Williamson: Well, I’m a student of A Course in Miracles, and then A Course in Miracles has a workbook which is 365 days of meditation exercises. I also do Transcendental Meditation, and 20 minutes twice a day, but I don’t always do TM every day. Okay, so I do the workbook of the course every day. I don’t do TM necessarily every day, okay, but I do know that, you know, we wake up in the morning, you take a shower, because you or bath. You don’t want to take yesterday’s dirt into the day.

1:24:14 If you don’t meditate, pray, do some kind of mindfulness practice, you might be all spiffed up on the outside, but you’re taking yesterday’s stress into the day, and when we’re stressed, we tend to make mistakes. So at a certain point, you don’t do your spiritual practice, you’re not trying to be a goody-goody. You just know how much you can mess up your life and do stupid things. You know, I always say to people, if you meditate today, I’m not saying you’re gonna be a perfect, enlightened master all day, but the chances to drastically reduce it.

1:24:48 You’ll do something really stupid. And what are those things? Send the text that you’ll regret sending four months or longer. Why did I send that email? Why did I say that to him?

1:25:00 What was I thinking? Why wasn’t I there with my kids, whatever it is. But most importantly, is I try. I mean, I’m not a perfect, unlike master. I’m not a perfect person.

1:25:12 I’m a flawed human being, like everyone is, but I try my best to be aware, and I think the most important thing to be aware of is your own life. What’s happening right now? Are you present? And if you’re obsessed with what happened in the past, you’re obsessed about what’s gonna, and in the future you obsess about what you’re trying to make happen. It takes discipline.

1:25:34 You know, the word disciple and discipline come from the same root. To try to be present, perfect at it, but I know my life’s a lot better when I achieve that. I’m trying to be present for this interview.

1:25:49 Brian Rose: I can feel that you’re trying to be present. There are, than anything else?

1:25:54 Yeah, sometimes I think about being present. I realize I’m not being present.

1:25:58 Marianne Williamson: Well, do ya, but you also realize how much life is better when you do. You see it in your work. I’m sure you see it with your guests.

1:26:04 You see it with yourself. We see it with our families.

1:26:08 Brian Rose: What I mean, besides the meditation, anything else that’s just something you always make sure you do? Journal, like you bite. You were very prolific in writing and speaking.

1:26:19 Marianne Williamson: I’m a writer, so I, you know, I write. I I’m busy, but a writing discipline garden right now. I know they say that writers are supposed to write every day. I feel with books you’re pregnant with it, and then when it’s time for the book to be born, you know Hemingway said when the story stops writing itself, put down the pencil. A woman, I noticed, even on social media, I stay in there for just even getting your words down.

1:26:58 You know, part of my practice, because part of my discipline is course American student is to really know, you know, big deal, and to, if anything, I’m trained, get over yourself. Marianne, what I do, what we all do, like anybody else, and sometimes I get it right and sometimes, like down there, when I get it wrong. I think if one thing I woke up myself credit for is I try to own it when I don’t own it. There’s usually somebody there to help you on it. Beauty of social media, may be the upside of social media.

1:27:48 Brian Rose: What was the best day of your life, and the worst?

1:27:52 Marianne Williamson: Oh, the birth of my daughter, and no doubt about that. One.

1:27:58 Brian Rose: I can see that. And worst?

1:28:00 Marianne Williamson: Nothing I want to share publicly.

1:28:05 Brian Rose: Okay, what scares you?

1:28:09 Marianne Williamson: The notion of two things. The notion that our environmental responsibility will simply go too far, and the notion that the democracy in my country could be irreparably compromised. But like I said, I think we’re gonna fix that.

1:28:43 Brian Rose: And what would we be surprised to learn about Marianne, something that you do that we’d be like, wow, never saw that coming?

1:29:02 Marianne Williamson: I think there are, I mean, stupid things. Like I love to binge-watch The Nanny with my daughter. I’m pretty much a nothing sock.

1:29:21 Brian Rose: Marianne, I always ask everyone here a few questions at the end.

1:29:31 I’m gonna ask you if, and I probably asked you this before, and I want to hear this answer, but if you could make the phone call to the 20-year-old you and give that young woman a bit of advice. I don’t know if you’re still in Texas, or if you’re thinking about going to New York, or I don’t know what’s going on now with various places.

1:29:47 Marianne Williamson: Relax, enjoy being young, and you look better than you think. I think everybody looks at pictures when we were kids and go, oh my god, I thought that was inadequate.

1:29:55 Brian Rose: Yeah, enjoy yourself more, relax, the future will take care of itself. I think that’s what we’d all say to our younger selves. Just relax, enjoy, enjoy being young. Do you ever connect the dots in reverse, of where you are now, and say, wow, those things I did as a teenager and in my twenties, it prepared me for this somehow?

1:30:15 Marianne Williamson: I think everything that I’ve ever been through has prepared me for this moment, my failures as much as my successes.

1:30:22 I get that sometimes you learn as much from your, you know, the only thing ultimately that’s a failure is something you fail to learn from, but I’ve recognized that my failures have also led to some of my strengths. You know, failure makes you more humble on the other side of it, makes you more grateful on the other side of it, makes you more willing to change and be a better person on the other side of it, willing to take responsibility. So I’ve learned from success, I’ve learned from failure.

1:30:51 I think it’s not circumstances that teach you, it’s your willingness to learn, and if you’re willing to learn, there’s no circumstance that doesn’t teach you, but if you’re not willing to learn, no sac circumstance can. So you know, I once read a quote from some German, a German author, who said, in a, and youth we learn, in age we understand. And I’ve reached an age where I’m just trying to understand. It’s always more to understand. Hmm.

1:31:34 Always. War. Hmm. I’m not. I’m on that journey.

1:31:43 Brian Rose: Try second part of that question, best advice you’ve ever received. These success secrets are only available events, an amazing community, and much, much more. Now, back to the rest of the show. This is a time of application, attack. I, okay, ten thousand years from now, will we be this completely evolved society, or will we still struggle with a lot of these same issues?

1:32:26 Marianne Williamson: I can’t possibly know the answer to that any more than you can. My daughter was telling me today that because of environmental factors, she said, you know, Mom, champagne a hundred years from now won’t be what it is now. I said, what, she said, well, the weather conditions are changing, so that what makes champagne, and then she was telling me about British wine, as a British wine, and she was once again talking about environmental factors until we were talking about champagne, but it wouldn’t be called champagne because it wouldn’t be in France.

1:33:04 And then that finally I said, wait a minute, we have to think about what is gonna be happening a hundred years from now. We have bigger things to concern ourselves with than champagne and wine. But it’s one of many, many, many things that obviously we can’t know.

1:33:20 Brian Rose: Yeah, last question. To that twenty-year-old that’s watching, listening to us right now, advice you give to them, you know, as if it was you and you were twenty.

1:33:29 You know, they’ve just heard you lay out things that we really need to think about, including these upcoming elections and a lot of these big issues, yet they’re twenty. They’re trying to discover themselves. They’re trying to be easier on themselves. What do they need to do? No, no.

1:33:45 Marianne Williamson: I grew up in a generation that read Ram Dass in the morning and went to Vietnam anti-war protests in the afternoon. In a very real way, I’m doing the same thing. Hell, I was doing, then we’re the same person. You’re the same person. The inside of a person isn’t what ages.

1:34:09 It was the same person you were when you were three years old, the same person you were when you were twenty. So my mother once said to me, you know, whatever age you are, you’ve been all the ages before it. She lives inside me. Sometimes I’ll be walking down the street and I’ll see some 20-year-old rocking it a certain way, and I’ll think, I remember that age. It’s like a house with many rooms, and every decade is a different room, and they’re all fabulous, actually.

1:34:59 But energy doesn’t get uncreated. It just transforms, and you’re in the room you’re in and you’re not in the room you used to be in, the 20s were hard and fabulous in other ways. The 60s are fabulous too in other ways. You have things in every age that you didn’t have in others, but that you do have, that you didn’t. You know, that there’s some things you don’t have anymore, and other things you have now that you didn’t use.

1:35:36 That I’d like to think I carry her inside me, and she carried me inside her. It’s powerful stuff.

1:35:43 Brian Rose: Marianne and I always love our conversations, and I remember ours vividly two and a half years ago, because you sat on the edge of your seat, and you were super present with me the whole time, and I was almost shocked by it, because not everyone is, all the time, especially people that have written so many books and given so many messages. Sometimes I just get the message.

1:36:08 I hate the person. So thank you for that.

1:36:11 Marianne Williamson: Thank you. You’re always very noticeably present in everything. What TED talk to you?

1:36:16 Brian Rose: You were there. You were fired up, and on the day, very present. It wasn’t something you, you know, wrote before. You were like, this is me now.

1:36:24 Marianne Williamson: Well, I appreciate that, and that’s why I’m here, because I remember the same thing about you and feel the same way.

1:36:30 Brian Rose: So it’s not honor to be here. Thank you.

1:36:32 Marianne Williamson: Well, I’m so happy we talked about these ideas. It’s important stuff, and it’s important that we talk about them. And I actually relist into our previous conversation too, and you said a conversation is everything.

1:36:45 It’s something so special. It’s this agreement in this trust and this communication of ideas, and changed the conversation, as how everything changes.

1:36:53 Brian Rose: And so that literally is what we do here. You know, it’s two people talking, and of course then some other people listen to it, and they get to have a conversation sometimes with us, with their own brains, but their friends and family. And this is, that seems to me what you’re doing, you know, going kind of to the people and saying, let’s have this conversation here and try to steer this ship, the place we need to, you know, the place we deserve to steer it for our kids and have these adult conversations.

1:37:21 And I’m really happy that you’re coming out and talking about everything, you know, and things that are dangerous for you. You know, I mean, you don’t have to go and take off big pharma. Yeah, you got enough things that you’re talking about now, things that they’re, you know, you’re you, and that’s also the beautiful thing about your own personal brand. You know, you can be you, and it’s a beautiful thing. And I’ll just finish on this one thought, is that you’ve been being you for a long time, and even before it was practical with the internet age.

1:37:48 And you know this concept of the long tail and all that stuff. And so thank you for that. I think that’s why we do love you, because you’ve always just put that message out there, and not, and thank you. I know a lot of people were really excited that you were coming back at me too. So peace and blessings.

1:38:04 Peace and blessings. To be voting in the November election, if I can, because Marianne just called me. I’m not voting last time because I still am an American citizen, and my two boys are American citizens, and I made that conscious effort when other people said, how could you do that to them? And who knows, these boys might have a conversation with me later and say, why did you do that, Dad? And I’m I’m prepared to tell them why, because I’m super proud of being an American.

1:38:28 I’m super proud of our country, and so like you, I’m very optimistic. So to finish off, Massa, I guess I am American. I’m one Emre. We say it’s about the journey. I wish you well in yours, Marianne.

1:38:42 Thank you so much. Right back at you. Thank you so much. God