Marianne Williamson - Our Deepest Fear

Full transcript: Marianne Williamson on London Real

8:30 This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Marianne Williamson, an American spiritual teacher, author and lecturer who has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show, Larry King Live and Charlie Rose. You published 11 books including four New York Times Best Sellers and are the founder of Project Angel Food, a Meals on Wheels program that serves homebound people with AIDS in the Los Angeles area. You also ran for US Congress in 2014.

8:54 Your quote: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure in our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us” is world-renowned. It’s often accredited to Nelson Mandela. We had a guest in here, Chris Eubank, a former world championship boxer who actually quoted you, but he thought it was Nelson, so we corrected him. Marianne, welcome to London Real.

9:18 Thank you, thank you. It’s nice having you here. I wanted to know, what is the relationship between Marianne and London? Oh, I love the city and my daughter lives here right now. She’s in Vienna because she’s needing someone to hire her so that she can get a visa to come back in, in case anybody’s listening who wants a fantastic, highly educated young woman to work for them.

9:42 But she has lived here for six, seven years and is definitely an expat, and like any mother I’m just happy that my daughter has found her soul’s home. So I feel particular affection for the city because it is where my daughter’s finding her life living. Do you find it to be a spiritual place for you? What kind of energy do you feel when you come to London? Well, I think spiritual is what’s inside people.

10:07 I think everybody’s on a spiritual path. Most people just don’t know it. So any place where they’re human beings, I find spirituality. That’s the path of the heart. There is so much to admire here about the history, about the culture, and about the people.

10:26 So I’m highly entertained here, educated here. It’s a more sophisticated culture. All European culture is more sophisticated than the United States, but you know, spiritually I think I feel strongly about honoring your incarnation. I think that we’re like cells of the body. Some are assigned cells to the heart.

10:47 Some cells are assigned to the lungs. Some cells are assigned to the pancreas or to the bones or to the blood. I think we’re all assigned some to the arts, some to the sciences, some to business, and we’re assigned to places. We’re assigned to North America, we’re assigned to Europe, we’re assigned to Asia. Now some people like my daughter are born one place and then they feel their soul’s assignment somewhere else.

11:08 For me, I feel my soul’s assignment is the United States. So it’s not about preferring it. It’s where your heart calls you and says serve there. I’m from San Diego, so when I tell people that they’re like, why did you leave? But for me this is my town.

11:26 Well, also, I don’t know why anybody would. I don’t know who says that. Oh, why, whatever. Yes, you have found your soul is at home here. The way my soul is, my daughter’s soul is at home in London.

11:38 My soul is at home in Los Angeles and a few other places, but I always feel, I think we’re all growing in this global consciousness and an awareness that we need to be global citizens at this time. The world is just changing so much that, you know, if you… I knew when I first started lecturing in Los Angeles and in New York that if you’re really going to have a career that speaks to the heart of things, you can’t stay on just one coast. Now if you really want to speak to the heart of things, you can’t stay in just one continent.

12:08 So more and more technology is giving us this opportunity travel is giving us this opportunity. So we’re all becoming less and less geocentric, I think, and that’s a good thing. And you are all over the place. You were in the states last month in Salt Lake, in Boston, you’re going to New Delhi after this. Yeah, you stay busy.

12:27 I travel a lot. Yes, and that’s, is that because your message needs to be delivered everywhere? I don’t think of my message as needing to be delivered. That would feel rather grandiose. No, I don’t see it that way, but I do think in life you start to live from a sense of something pushing you from inside, some inner calling and guidance, and I feel just so privileged and blessed that, you know, at this point in my career, given how long I’ve been doing this, I’m honored and privileged that anybody want to hear anything I have to say, and the fact that invitation comes from so many places in the world.

13:07 It’s a great honor. I watched you speak at the Harvard Divinity School recently, and you were talking, you kind of dropped a kind of history of religion and politics intersecting in America. You’re very well studied in that, and I was curious when you come to London and look at England’s rich often twisted, hard-to-believe history of religion and politics. Do you find that kind of fascinating? Yes, and my daughter is a British historian and a religious historian, so I hear so much from her, and I do find it fascinating.

13:39 Listen, nations are just collections of individuals. I find people fascinating. So there are very few countries whose history is not on some level fascinating. England, though, is amazing. Nobody is ever doubting that.

13:54 The thing about the United States at this time, however, is just our sheer size, our sheer numbers, and the power that is a result of that is such that we are consequential and when we get it right, we have been and continue to be a blessing on the world. But when we get it wrong, terrible things can result. And so I think that there’s a sense of responsibility that goes along with American citizenship now that is not more meaningful than any other citizenship, but brings with it a deep recognition that American foreign policy for instance, for ill or for good, can affect the lives of so many millions of people.

14:44 At this point, you made reference to that in your Huffington Post article. Yes, about the recent terror attacks in Paris, and you said, “Americans are decent people, but some decisions made in our name over the last few decades have been a deep and dark betrayal of that decency.” I was wondering if you could explain that article or what you were thinking. I believe that the invasion of Iraq, with which England went along, by the way, but certainly instigated by the United States, was more than, you know, people say, oh, it was a mistake, or it was one of the biggest foreign policy failures or mistakes in American history.

15:19 Well, yeah. Don’t stop with that. Move on with that and allow yourself to truly feel the horror of what we did, the just the sheer immorality of the fact and stupidity of the fact that we attacked a country that had nothing to do with 9/11, that had not attacked us. There were many people within the security agencies of the United States who deeply questioned the issue of weapons of mass destruction. we have the majority of US senators who didn’t bother to even walk down the hall and read that classified material, although it was available to them.

15:54 And with that invasion and also with the unbelievably naive, to put it mildly, way that we dealt with the city of Baghdad and beyond Baghdad after the invasion created an even larger horror. As one woman said to me, an Iraqi woman said to me, “When Saddam and his sons were alive, we knew we had three monsters, and we’re not stupid. We talked about it all the time, and what we would do about those three monsters. You have unleashed unlimited monsters. There was no al-Qaeda in Iraq.

16:31 Saddam Hussein himself was a secularist. It’s not like he was a good guy. He was a terrible man, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re not invading every country that is led by someone that whose actions we find horrifying, and with this invasion we have unleashed this horror. I mean ISIL.

16:55 Much of the leadership of ISIL grew out of the disbanded army. You know, our politics is like allopathic medicine. It’s like traditional allopathic Western medicine, where all you do is seek to eradicate the symptoms or suppress the symptoms. That’s not adequate to the challenges of this moment. We need a more integrative approach to social and political issues, just like we now accept a more integrative paradigm in medicine.

17:22 That there are psychological factors, that there are emotional factors, that there are spiritual factors and part of that emotional and psychological factor is countering, in factoring in, whether what you are doing leads to human despair? Does it lead to people hating you? Does it lead to people’s hopelessness? Because whenever you have large groups of people who are desperate and hopeless, and particularly if they hate you, then you are creating for yourself a national security risk, because those people will by definition in time become more vulnerable to ideological capture by genuinely psychotic forces, and that’s what we have on our hands now.

17:58 We fabricated a moral field. We did not live up to the best of what we are as Western civilization, and as a consequence the problem didn’t begin with how many people wanted to kill us, but just with people not liking us and then giving them reason to deeply distrust us, and they were rather easy to pull over. Now, this is not in any way to justify or to rationalize anything being done, the horrors being done in Paris and by ISIL, and beheadings and executions and the horrible things they’re doing.

18:31 Quite the opposite. I’m not a pacifist. I think that we did the moral thing in taking on Hitler. Obviously to me that’s obvious, but it’s not as simple. Now, this is not an operable cancer we’re talking about here.

18:46 This is a cancer that is metastasized. So I’m not, I’m not facile here. I’m not like, oh, we just need to love love, love, but I am saying the fact that we did not love and we did not factor in genuine moral questioning and deep reflective thought. And we as citizens, I think, how much did we really protest how much did we really think deeply, each of us, about the invasion of Iraq, and in our own countries, both in England and in the United States put up a fuss about it?

19:15 If upon deep reflection we did disagree with our governments. Now we are where we are, and I think that one of the important things for us to do, those countries among us who do feel, wow, maybe we shouldn’t have done what we did, is to atone This is where spirituality intersects with politics. Just like as individuals, when you know that you have contributed to your own disasters and grown-ups do that. Grown-ups take a good look, and when things don’t go right in our lives we say, what even little part did I play in fostering this catastrophe in my life?

19:53 Not everything is like that, but a lot of times you’re getting a divorce, whatever, and if you’re deep in your thinking you go, I can see where I contributed to the demise of my marriage. So that’s true in most situations most situations in life. Not all, but most situations in life. If we’re honest with ourselves if we take that fearless moral inventory that they talk about in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous, if you do take a real inventory of your own character defects, then you find that power.

20:22 It’s a spiritual power. If it’s atonement it’s a genuine cosmic reset button, and I think the Western nations need to do that. Now, how can the US atone or the UK atone? What would that look like if someone listened to you right now? Not that Obama and David Cameron could do it on their own, but say they could, what would that act look like?

20:40 Well, it’s a very good question. And thank you for asking it, because it’s a question that is what we should be asking. The beauty of a free democratic society, and the beauty of vigorous democracies like England and the United States, is that things change when the conversations change. Your life changes when you begin having a different conversation in your head, and your society changes when you begin having a different conversation in the society. You know, Europe Germany after World War II.

21:09 And by the way, I’m not analogizing here the horrors of the Holocaust with foreign policy errors in the United States or Britain. So maybe that’s not the best example, but there are examples of countries who, in their case, of course, it was full-on Holocaust. How could there be anything else? But there are less egregious, less heinous errors, and to the people who died in Iraq and other places where we have destabilized the Middle East. That would not be a less heinous error.

21:39 Nations can atone, and on a metaphysical level, two or more, if it just begins, you know, the field, the quantum field the spiritual field is beyond the realm of time and space, the three-dimensional realm. You know, Einstein said time and space are illusions of consciousness. So the entire three-dimensional realm is like a veil in front of a true truth and we pierce that veil. Anytime two people agree on something, that’s the most powerful force in the universe.

22:05 It’s an agreement between two people. That’s what the metaphysical traditions say. So just you and me talking, you and me having this conversation, people who are watching, people who are thinking, you know, that’s true, we need to atone and own our own part. It begins to affect the field, begins to affect things on an etheric level and all minds are joined. So once you make a shift in perception, and once that shift in perception is shared then it begins to affect situations that we can’t even understand or know about on a rational level.

22:35 Europe felt ISIS or ISIL this last week, you know tragedy in Paris, and we’ve heard about the events Has America kind of gotten it around their head that, you know, this is something to really be concerned of to be scared of? I’ve been in deep touch, as I’m sure you have been as an American, with friends there, you know. Is it as big a deal there? And from what I hear, absolutely yes, absolutely yes, and it is affected the conversation and the American presidential race and so forth.

23:03 Absolutely. This was big. This was really big, of course. We were affected by Charlie Hebdo, but obviously this is beyond. I think everybody knows that this is a hit at Western civilization.

23:17 At this point, is the next one. London is the next one. Washington, it’s the next one. Los Angeles, it’s the next one. Madrid.

23:24 It’s, you’re known for your thoughts on forgiveness. I mean, not more so than anything else, but very much so. Yes. You know, you taught Oprah lessons about forgiveness. You made me start thinking about forgiveness in a different way.

23:38 When you hear stuff that happened, you know, a week ago in Paris, I’m sure a lot of people look to you what are your first thoughts when it comes to managing forgiveness in this situation, especially a few days afterwards? Forgiveness is everything, but you do have to name what it is you’re forgiving. So the first job is for us, look, from a spiritual perspective, is look at yourself. Look at yourself, and that’s why I’m talking so much about national atonement, how the United States and Britain and others need to take a deep look at how our own foreign policy has betrayed the best values of our people.

24:14 The quote that you read there, before, there was an article by David Stockman who is no liberal. David Stockman was Ronald Reagan’s finance guy, so this is no raving lefty, but he wrote a scathing article that is very, very important reading, I think, for everybody. That was in the Huffington Post a couple of days ago, around November 17th, I think, where he talks about after the Berlin Wall came down, we could have disbanded NATO at that point. You know, it’s Britain and the United States.

24:40 We all started sending ships to the Persian Gulf. I mean, there are so many things for us to look at, and this is not a blame America or blame England sentiment. This is a grown-up taking responsibility. So the first issue of forgiveness is forgiving ourselves, but we can’t forgive ourselves until first we name, you know, in A Course in Miracles it says you can’t bring the light to the darkness. You have to bring the darkness to light.

25:06 So the first issue of forgiveness is praying for forgiveness for our own mistakes and for our own casual acquiescence to violence perpetrated particularly against a country that had not attacked us. I think we need to humbly pray for forgiveness. Abraham Lincoln said nations have to confess their sins and pray for forgiveness just like individuals do, and I agree with that passionately. Secondly, in terms of forgiveness regarding someone like terrorists and ISIL Yeah.

25:34 People who were in Paris that day saw things happen. Well, you know, I think some of the most eloquent and profound words that have been said and written on this issue have come from victims’ families and victims themselves that we will refuse to hate. Forgiveness is not, you’re a jerk, you did something terrible, but I’m spiritual, so I forgive you. Forgiveness is simply the recognition that beyond this veil of illusion, beyond the destructible, lies the indestructible.

26:06 Fear is merely the absence of love. You turn on love, fear is gone. The same way when you turn on light, darkness is gone. Forgiveness means standing in conviction that love will have the final say here and that the love. I don’t believe that people who are terrorists were born to be terrorists.

26:24 One of the problems that we have in the world today is how many young children are being taught to hate. little children, little children, in many parts of the world, in some countries that your country and mine do a lot of business with every day. These children are being taught to hate. So children are not born this way. Children are not born this way.

26:46 And then other situations, such as ones I’ve mentioned, have, I think, bred a lot of fear and anger in people. For us to know that all people are good but that insanity exists, and damaged people damage people, and people can go insane, and people who are violently, criminally insane exist within the context of an entire human race that is insane. That is what Gandhi said, that the problem with the world is humanity is not in its right mind. We have not predicated our domestic and international policies on justice and brotherhood and love.

27:24 And when you don’t fill a room with light, darkness sets in. So forgiveness means taking responsibility for where we have not been channels of light, knowing that those who are instruments of evil. And I do believe it is naive to underestimate the level of evil that we’re talking about here. I do. I think that in our minds they need to be spiritually quarantined.

27:48 It’s like, you think of someone who is a he’s a, you know, like someone who would cut off your head if he had a chance and you surround him in your visualization and in your meditation with a golden egg, and you see the eggshell is made of a kind of titanium, and the malevolence in the mind of that person can’t get past the titanium to turn into worldly manifestation. But then on the inside of the eggshell you have to see a golden light pouring at them and healing them and welcoming them back into that brotherhood of man. That’s what forgiveness is.

28:28 Forgiveness is knowing that there are other levels here than just what the mortal eye can see and in that place love still reigns, but we need to stand on the ground of that love so real forgiveness doesn’t make you a doormat, and it doesn’t make your IQ lower and it doesn’t make you a fuzzy thinker. It doesn’t make you incapable of military action if what your heart then tells you is that military action is correct but you would do so with a very sober mind rather than the adrenaline of war fever. So it’s an intelligent decision.

29:10 You’re like, I am going to forgive that person. I’ve thought long in heart of it, and I’m going to consciously do it. It’s not just forgiving everything. Yes. Franklin melt did not call the Nazis evildoers.

29:19 He called them unworthy men but he kicked their ass. The Allies did what needed to be done, but you didn’t get the feeling that Roosevelt or Churchill? They weren’t giddy about it. How are you? They were mature men, very mature men.

29:37 Yeah, how are you with forgiveness? Are you a black belt in forgiveness? Is that black belt in forgiveness. It’s interesting that you say that. What’s right under black belt?

29:46 Brown belt. Yeah, I’m a brown belt and forgive Okay, and where were you five years ago? Were you the brown belt as well, or have you gotten better? I’ve gotten better. I always say I wasn’t abused as a child, but I’ve been plenty abused as an adult, and my astrological sign is Cancer.

30:12 I can be thin skinned. It’s, I can be as reactive as anybody I can be as don’t with me as anybody. Do you think you’ll achieve the black belt level, or do you think that’s no. I already told you I’m not black belt, but I’m brown, but you and never will be a black belt Oh, no, I think that we should all hold that. That’s a very serious topic question that you raised, because, and of course, A Course in Miracles says you are not perfect, or you would not have been born, but it is your mission to become perfect here.

30:42 I, you know, I often say somewhat in a kind of amused way, well, I’m no enlightened master, but I’m sure better than I used to be. That’s where most of us are. but I think with the events in the world today that’s not enough. Only a very, very evolved civilization will know how to handle what we’re faced with in the world today. So I think that what is called for is all of us making committing ourselves and deepening our intention and our devotion to the goal of becoming black belts as never before.

31:19 So no, I’m a brown belt at forgiveness, but I’m very aware pretty much every day of my life that the goal is black belt. What was it like growing up in Texas in the 50s? Texas is great. It has been deeply misrepresented by some political figures. Texas is great.

31:46 Texas was great, and Texas is great, and I’m I’m sorry it has gained the reputation that it has, which it deserves in some ways but, you know, like, I grew up in Houston. Houston is a world-class city and a very progressive city politically as well as otherwise. Austin is one of the great, you know, fantastic places in the United States. So Texas is great, and I feel that there are a lot of things in my, even in my career, you know, I’ve sort of read things, and I’ve said, well, and I’ve read people say things about me, say, well, she’s a woman, and that’s really a woman who’s out there, and then another somebody would say, well, you know, she’s Jewish, and so, you know, she’s really got that attitude that Jews have, and I’ve thought so many times, no, I said, I’m from Texas.

32:40 That’s what you’re seeing. What you’re calling, you know, is a product of my Jewish personality or my female personality. It’s actually my Texas personality. So I’m Texas. I don’t know if you answer my question or not, but what was it like growing up?

32:55 Well, this is the adult that you get out of the child. So and it’s 100% Texan. No, you know, whatever. I’ve, I live in California. I’ve lived in New York.

33:05 I’ve lived in New Mexico. You know, it’s like we were talking about at the beginning. I think as we evolve, our souls belong in certain places, but I think the conversation in the world today needs to be our common humanity, no matter where we are. Geography is just geography. How did the deepest level, how did you learn how to speak?

33:25 Because like I said, I saw you speak for two hours at the Harvard Divinity School about it. It seemed off the cuff, but you were weaving in all sorts of fascinating ideas about history, spirituality, divinity and then I saw you speak in Salt Lake City, 8-minute power speech. You know, Martin Luther King, inspired, felt almost Southern Baptist, and it was just a completely different piece. And those were within the space of like five days. And how do you, how do you get to that level of speaking?

33:54 And how, and also, how did you get there, and why? Well, first of all, I’ve been doing what I do for 30 years, and I write books. So if you’ve written a book about something, you spent a long time working out your ideas, writing them. So by the time you’re talking to say it’s off the cuff, you’ve been thinking about these things and talking about these things for years. I always, I think of myself as a kind of jazz philosopher.

34:22 I might not know exactly what riff I’m going to use at a particular moment, but I have a practice, that riff I think sometimes people are overly impressed with the way I answer questions. Oh, I can’t believe she knew to answer that question. I’m like, I’ve heard it about 30 times before. Right? It’s not like I’ve never heard this question before.

34:40 It’s not like I haven’t had the opportunity to think this one through. so I wouldn’t call it off the cuff, but there is a spontaneity which you lose if you go into any environment knowing exactly what you want to say at exactly the particular time. I think you rehearse, and then you throw out the script once the curtain goes up. Okay, and for that 8-minute speech, where did that kind of inspiration come from? Who do you look to?

35:04 You look to Martin Luther King? Or did you, you’re from the South. You’re from Houston, which is closer to the South than say Dallas. Um, you must have been around some of that feeling. I personally love it.

35:14 I wish we would bring more of it back. We don’t see it over here, obviously, and I don’t see too many political well, I hear there’s a bunch of Texans here in London. That talk that did really go viral, that little talk I gave at the Parliament of the World’s Religions, that was to the women’s plenary session. Now I have a career that is non-denominational. I am not a clergy, and I have for six years, I had a pulpit.

35:51 I was the spiritual leader of a Unity Church, of a spiritual center in Warren, Michigan. I was in Michigan for 8 years. So I have strong ideas about organized religion. I have strong ideas about institutionalized religion and for the most part I don’t have a lot of respect I think that for the most part, now, this is a broad generalization but for the most part, organized, institutionalized religion has abdicated its role abdicated its role as your comforter, abdicated its role as real healer and abdicated its role of conscience.

36:28 It has been co-opted by the worldly mind. For the most part, it’s about doctrines and theories and buildings and dictates and dogma. I have very little respect for that and so when you have this Parliament of the World’s Religions, and they’re making a big deal about the fact that there’s so many women, and women’s voices will be heard, I’m just not the kind of person to say, I’m a Jew, I’m a woman, or I’m a Texan. I’m not going to let that stand. I’m not going to not speak what I feel needs to be spoken, which is, thank you very much for letting us in this weekend.

37:06 Hello. But historically you’ve not been so good to women, and in many cases you’re still not good to women. So can we talk and be real? Because that’s what I cannot stand about the hypocrisy of organized religious institutions that don’t keep it real. There is no spirit of God when it’s not real.

37:25 There is no Shakti when it’s not real. There is no real space of that electricity of human transformation when it’s not real, when it’s not honest. That’s why we’re talking about, even in politics, it’s the same thing. Can we be real here about British and American foreign policy? We, you simply do not get to the truth.

37:43 You do not get to the transformational fire if you are not real. And that is what compels me that is what to me is the fire and the love and the radicalism at the center of things and so many people today are walking around kind of having checked out and now we’re numbing ourselves. So many people numbing themselves. It’s epidemic of unnecessary, absolutely unnecessary, casual anti-depressant use. So to me religion should be an awakener.

38:16 Education should be an awakener. and so when I go onto a stage, whether it’s at Harvard or at the Parliament of the World’s Religions I’m going to the best of my ability say as I see it. Is the Catholic Church going to get real anytime soon? Well, I have a lot of respect for Pope Francis you know, when I was growing up, when I was a little girl, John the 23rd was Pope and you know, I grew up, I’m Jewish, and we Jews had tremendous respect for John the 23rd.

38:48 He was the spiritual leader for the world. We had great respect for him, and then in the intervening years Catholicism has moved away from its emphasis on social justice issues or at least the church, the Vatican, has moved away from what I grew up with, which was the Catholic emphasis on social justice issues more onto the issues of abortion, personal morality, and so forth. So I have tremendous respect for Pope Francis. I think he is someone that I feel, as an individual, to me, I think of him as a genuine spiritual leader, not just for Catholics but for all of…

39:27 I do not see him as my religious leader because I’m not Catholic, but as a spiritual, global spiritual leader. I see him as that just like the Dalai Lama. And so I don’t know, in the internals of the church, I did not incarnate a Catholic. I’m not called to Catholicism. I feel that it’s Catholics who are on this earth to steward Catholicism, and so it’s Catholic, Catholic people will deal with the issue of women priests and Catholicism, that’s not my beat.

39:53 But in terms of the large global issues, his calling, global capital, is on its ethical issues and so forth. I deeply appreciate the pope and think that he is doing a great service to all mankind, and the Dalai Lama, the Dalai Lama obviously I think the fact that so many of us can hear the wisdom in his words I asked him when I met him what role meditation has to play in political activism and so forth, because this the intersection of spirituality and politics has always been it’s a, it’s, I’m called to that conversation. and I asked him, and he said, in order to save the world we must have a plan, but no plan will work unless we meditate.

40:43 So those have been meaningful words for me, deeply meaningful words for me. He also, you know, he said the other day something about how humanity made this problem. Speaking after the attacks in Paris, he said humanity made this problem, so we can’t just pray and call to God to fix it. Humanity has to fix it on one hand, he’s correct, that obviously, that humanity created this. God didn’t do this, we did.

41:10 But my view, my understanding of prayer is different than his, because as I pray and ask God to fix it, I’m not asking for God to intervene between the law of cause and effect. God is not going to change the effects if I’m not willing to change the cause. But in asking, in praying, to me, we are asking for the divine intercession from a thought system beyond our own to actually change our consciousness so that we do change on a level of cause. Do you meditate, and have you always meditated?

41:39 I, not always meditated. I’ve always been… I’ve always had a religious, spiritual and religious fever even from when I was a little girl. But do I meditate? Absolutely.

41:47 And I think that it’s the most important issue on the planet right now. Not, not the most important issue. I think it is the most important tool that we have for personal and global transformation. I think it becomes more relevant these days because there’s so many ways to occupy your mind, and distraction yeah, and you can have it now at any instant, whereas back in the day you might have to, you know, walk home in silence. That’s so true.

42:15 We are living, there is an assault. Modernity is an assault. We all are receiving through the internet and so many other sources, by which, ultimately, meaningless stimuli is bombarding us all the time, and we’ve lost perspective, and we’ve lost. Exact. Your point is so well taken.

42:33 It used to be just the walk home. The fact that you didn’t have a cell phone, so there were times when people couldn’t reach you. So the lack of reflection, the lack of, you know, the other day speech, you were talking about that eight-minute talk of mine was all over the internet. Yeah, felt like 25 minutes. Oh, thank you.

42:53 I read on the social media some woman wrote, she gets to her point at 6 minutes 41 seconds, so spread the word so that people don’t have to waste their time, can go right to 6 minutes 41 seconds. Well, on one hand I thought it was odd. I thought it was funny what she thought was the point, but beyond that you can’t even watch six minutes. People have such a hard time sitting, listening to someone for six minutes, and we make mistakes when we’re moving too fast.

43:24 And that’s exactly what we’re talking about here. Humanity is moving too fast. We’re not thinking deeply. We’re not reflecting, because of that, we’re not communicating deeply we’re not sharing even an experience like you and I are having here because the phones are off, and we’re not going to do anything else. That’s why I think a conversation like this is a service.

43:47 And thank you for having me. Yeah, you made that point earlier that this is how it starts, a conversation what did you say was the most, one of the most special things that can happen, or an agreement between two people? Is, well, I said the agreement between two people. The Course in Miracles says the most powerful force in the universe is an agreement between two people. But the issue of conversation is that any change in your life starts with a change in the conversation you’re having with yourself, and any change in the society comes from the fact that people start having a different conversation.

44:18 And I think it’s important, first of all, if we’re going to have the painful conversation around what Britain and America have done, and other countries in the West have done wrong, it’s also important at the same time to remember we haven’t done everything wrong, and we’ve done a lot of things very, very good. You know, you have to hold that juxtaposition. Talk to me about the connection between religion and politics. You called it a vortex at Harvard, and, you know, you were drawn to politics, running a year ago.

44:50 Yeah, I did. What was that like? That experience I want to hear about that. And also, since you were talking about real and people want real, you know, I can only think of Donald Trump in America, and some people say he’s popular because he’s real, and some people say he’s a horrible thing, and I also say, well, he’s the sign of what people are liking at this point, and I’m from America, but I’m not going to apologize for America for liking this guy. So what is your perspective?

45:19 We bring up such good points first of all about politics and religion. You know, the abolitionist movement in the United States emanated from the Quakers and many of the leaders of the suffrage movement were Quakers. and the civil rights movement, of course, was led by a preacher from Georgia, from Atlanta, Martin Luther King Jr. So all of the great social justice movements in my country’s history and your native country’s history have emanated from a spiritual center, because what the Quakers had about slavery is a perfect example.

45:54 They believe in the inner light within all men, women, and children. And Gandhi was very influenced by the Quakers. He said, and for good reason, they believe in an inner light within every man, woman and child. and that because of that inner light, anything, and particularly any institution such as slavery which does not honor that inner light, is not only deemed evil, but you have to go further than that. It is therefore deemed intolerable.

46:19 It is therefore intolerable for me to in any way participate and it is intolerable for me not to do what I can to end it. That was the consciousness of the Quakers and the abolitionist movement. But there’s a second issue that spirituality and the spiritual seeker brings to that table, which is not only that you find that which is not of love intolerable but that you believe that there is a force of consciousness greater than us in the presence of whom, and in the space of which, another possibility exists, that beyond this darkness there is an indestructible light.

47:00 And so at the same time, you both address what in Christianity would be called the crucifixion and the resurrection that is in every, all the great religious systems. You look in Judaism, there is the slavery Pharaoh enslaving the Israelites, which is the human condition, and the trip to the Promised Land, which is enlightenment and that’s what the spiritual vortex is. It’s a realization of the suffering of the world, not looking away. The soul course that Gandhi talked about, bearing witness to the agony of others.

47:30 You do not look away. That’s not transformation, that’s denial. So you bear witness to the agony of others, but you also devote your life to being a space of possibility for the end and the transformation of that suffering. So I think that that is as meaningful today as it was meaningful for the abolitionists, for the suffragists, for civil rights, and for people in any society in terms of their social transformation. I’m just not as aware, obviously, of the history of Great Britain so that’s where I live on that.

48:00 What was the second thing you talked about, politics? So that’s my running. Yeah, well but, and, but you know, you just described kind of the idea that, so you’re saying that all great political movements, well, in the US came from kind of that religious base. I, those, the major ones, the major ones came from a spiritual space, not necessarily in terms of their founders and their leaders. Yes, it emanated from religion, but you want to separate exoteric religion, which is the external, the institutions, the doctrines, dogmas, that I already expressed my opinions about, to the esoteric to that which is within us.

48:32 The real… the word religion comes from a Latin religia, which means to bind back so it has to do with a religious fervor, but that the genuine religious fervor today is not necessarily finding itself channeled through institutionalized or organized religions. Um, I did run for Congress. It was the most exhilarating experience of my life, and the most brutal experience of my life, and, you know, with the events of this week, you better believe I wish I was in there, I’d have some things to say.

49:02 You would get up and tell them a few things. Hello, what do you think? I hear it’s impossible to run without money and without that backing. It’s just, it’s, it’s really just, almost pointless. Well, the greatest moral challenge of my generation, of Americans, is to get money out of politics, especially since Citizens United and the McCutcheon case.

49:23 We have a legalized system of bribery and corruption in the United States. Um, it is, it is the decimation of democracy itself. We basically are ruled by an oligarchy of plutocracy, corporatocracy, rather than genuine democracy at this point, and the super PACs made it worse, and the super PACs make it worse having said that, and that’s why I’ve supported Bernie Sanders, for instance, who supports a constitutional amendment. We need a constitutional amendment in the United States that would actually establish public funding for political campaigns.

49:54 Anything less than that, and money rather than the people of the United States will continue to rule our government. In my case, and this was part of what contributed to my deep sense of disappointment in myself and failure, is that the community of my supporters were extremely financially generous. I did have enough money to do it. There were people from other countries. First few months we kept sending checks back, because it’s against the law for people who are not citizens of the United States to contribute to political campaigns, but the kindness and enthusiasm was so great, I’d have to write back, thank you so much, but I have to send your money back.

50:32 So what I saw from that is that there is such support in the United States for the kind of message. Unfortunately, I thought that there was legitimacy in my running because I felt that my knowledge, understanding, and passion about the issues meant that I could hit the ground running from day one as a congressperson. I believed that, and I still believe that, and there were many who agreed with that. What I vastly underestimated was the significance of the fact that I’d never run or even seriously been part of an actual political campaign.

51:06 I thought you raise the money, and then if you raise the money you hire someone to do that and that’s simply not the way it is. So it’s my ignorance of the political game. Okay, so even some of the most seasoned politicians failed in their first runs. George Bush, I remember seeing a history on him, and he ran Obama, Barack Obama as well. So the experience is a big part of it.

51:28 Um, are you going to give it another go at some point? If I was younger, if I was 10 years younger 15 years younger, I’d probably be saying, oh, give me 10 years to get over it, and I’ll be back in there I doubt that. It’s certainly not a calling I feel at this time. I don’t feel there’s nothing in me. So I, I that’s not, I do not feel that call right now, but I am as passionate as ever about the issues, and I’m as passionate as ever about the political policies about the political possibilities.

51:58 I mean, I’m sorry that I failed. But I am still out there, and I’m passionate about Bernie Sanders’ presidential race. I’m passionate about a man named Alan Grayson, who is a congressman in Florida, now running for Senate there. I’m passionate. I feel that I can be of use and of service to educating people who are interested in more of the candidates running, who I do think are speaking very much these ideas that we’re talking about here: greater justice, greater brotherhood, and need more of an audience, need more people to know that they’re there.

52:38 So we can all play a role. You know, running for political office is one way to play a role, and a campaign does, you know. I was told by Dennis Kucinich, the former congressman, in Los Angeles, in America, he said every campaign has a success of some kind, and I do feel that my campaign helped to harness a certain kind of energy. So there, it was not all failure. I mean, there’s failure in that I didn’t win the race, clearly, but I think that it brought many people into the political process who had not been before, and so forth.

53:09 So there are many ways that citizenship can wield and yield the power that a citizen in a democracy has, and I plan to do my best, and I try to do my best. You’re very hard on yourself. No, I’m not hard on myself. I mean, thank you. I mean, I hear what you’re saying because I’ve talked about how I failed at that effort.

53:30 I do not equate having failed at something with being a failure. I did fail at something, but you’re only a failure if you didn’t learn from your mistakes, and you’re only a failure if you’re not going to go forward and take what you can. So I did fail at that effort, but I do not feel that I as a human being am a failure. Um, I have learned as much in life from my failures as from my successes. The only failure is a failure to learn from something.

53:58 So I, and as you said, and I’m aware of that, many of the politicians. Look at Lincoln. How many races did he lose before he won? You know, so I understand that it’s just at my age, I, I don’t, you know, I think that I came into that a little bit late in the game. So, you know, who knows?

54:18 I just know what’s present for me right now. That’s not there. It was a brutal experience. What are your thoughts on Donald Trump and his popularity? Okay, I think, you first of all I find your own thoughts very interesting.

54:30 Um, I think everything you said about Donald Trump was true. I think that he just says what he thinks, and there’s the good and the bad of that. The good is somebody being on some level real. The bad is that he doesn’t seem to think before he speaks. Um, his thinking, you know, much of what he says seems like maybe he thought about it for five seconds or so.

54:54 I think that people are so tired of the canned communication of so many people in politics, and people aren’t real. People want real. People want patriotism, and people want deep spiritual meaning. If you do not provide them with that, they will take the ersatz version, and so if people with genuine depth do not open their mouths and speak what’s true and real, then somebody coming from no depth whatsoever is going to open their mouth, and people are going to mistake that for genuine shaky do you see what I’m saying?

55:32 And if, if, if people, as so much of the left, it’s too cool to bring up the inword of morality. You know, traditionally, the conservative side of the political spectrum emphasize private morality and the liberal side of the political spectrum emphasizes public morality. But what has happened is that the left, it, it, it refuses too often. Once again, Bernie Sanders is not included in this. This is why I like him.

55:58 He speaks about economic justice in moral terms. It is, economic injustice is immoral, but the left has abdicated the higher ground by acting like they’re too cool, and the same with patriotism. If you’re too cool to admit that you love your country, then somebody’s total BS and nationalism and real scary stuff is going to take up that field that you’ve abdicated. So I think that if the left had not abdicated a lot of its moral authority and a lot of its own genuine passion.

56:31 Expressed passion rather than this compromise with this kind of centrism that has become so in vogue and become really the tenor of the corporate Democratic Party. People are just like, forget it, and they go far too often for ersatz versions. And plus Americans just love a good old rags-to-riches success story, don’t they? Well, but wait a minute. Trump is not a rags-to-riches.

57:00 Trump was rich. Trump was not rags-to-riches. Trump was a very very nice outfit to a stellar one. He was from a $1,000 suit to a $10,000 suit. That’s not rags.

57:11 Original love billionaires. I mean, Americans, well, unfortunately, yeah, we just will. I mean, you know, they will always subconsciously be drawn to these figures and the jets and everything. Well, I, you know, I agree with you that he’s an American character. I agree with you.

57:25 I need a hero is what you’re saying. Well, I don’t see him as a hero. I do not see him as a hero, and I fear for my country if he’s elected president. Yes, but there is an aspect of his bogus personality which is, even in all its vulgarity, which is a little bit of, you know, we got characters here. You know, just please, dear God, may he not wield great power within our government.

57:50 I think that would be unfortunate. I tune in to watch him, so I don’t know what that says. He is oddly entertaining. I want to ask you about the word miracle, because it’s one that you use and, you know, when I grew up, I associated that word with religion, which was God and church, and something that I was like, I’m not going to go there. Right?

58:11 And so, but you use it, and you don’t apologize for using it. Yeah, which I like. I like people that don’t apologize, like you and Trump. Um, and when you use that word, what sense do you mean it? And you also talk about how the universe is self-organizing and self correcting, and I just wanted to know, um, yeah, where that word comes from and what do you mean when you say Miracle.

58:31 I’m a student of a set of books called A Course in Miracles. and the course is not a religion. There’s no dogma, there’s no doctrine. It’s a psychological training it’s a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy, and it uses traditional Christian terms but in very non-traditional ways and it defines a miracle as a shift in perception from fear to love. Now, thinking is the level of cause, and what happens in our lives is the level of effect.

59:02 Thoughts cause our experience. Thoughts create form. Every thought creates form on some level, so when you shift in your thinking that is your greatest power to shift the world. So a miracle is when my mind shifts, my mental filter shifts, and once my mental filter shifts, my world cannot but shift. And because all minds are joined, when I change my mind other people change.

59:29 It’s like every time the butterfly flaps its wings on the South Pole, we know, for a scientific fact, that this affects the wind currents on the North Pole. All minds are joined. Every time a wave moves, the ocean moves. So a shift in our perception is a huge internal power. Talk to me about this, we are all connected idea.

59:54 I’ve had I’ve been blessed by getting to speak with hundreds of people that have come here, and some of them are quite evolved and really can sit here and say, Brian, we are all one. And it’s taken me many years to even see glimpses of that. Sometimes it takes, uh, even a psychedelic experience for me to see glimpses of that. But I can slowly, start at 44 years of age, to see little pieces of that, but you try to explain that to, I don’t know, a normal person or a person on the street or a person on Twitter, and they might have a really hard time of thinking that that terrorist in Paris is actually me too.

1:00:31 Where do you start that conversation? Most people do know that scientists now tell us that while this seems like a solid object, my holding on to this chair, it’s actually not a solid object. So Einstein said time and space are illusions of consciousness. So this whole issue of the reality, the solid reality of the three dimensions, the time-space continuum is now, according to the furthest regions of science itself, illusion. Science is now agreeing with Buddha.

1:01:04 It is now agreeing with books like A Course in Miracles that say the same thing: that this three-dimensional plane, of course, it’s real within the three-dimensional plane, but is itself a vast mortal hallucination. It is itself a vast mortal illusion. Beyond this realm there is a quantum field. It is beyond time and space, and in that indestructible quantum field, whether you think of it in religious terms as the mind of God, or you think of it in scientific, secular terms, doesn’t matter.

1:01:35 It’s the idea that in that space separation does not exist. So according to my physical eyes, you’re over there and I’m over here. Once again, Einstein agreeing with Buddha, agreeing with A Course in Miracles, that itself is an illusion. Who I am is energy, and it is not confined. This suit, these clothes that I’m wearing, not just the clothes, the body that I inhabit is itself a suit of clothes.

1:02:00 But who I am does not stop at the confines of my skin. It continues outward, and there’s actually, in the energy in you continuing outward, there is actually no place where you stop and I start. We’re like sunbeams thinking we’re separate from other sunbeams, when in fact there’s no place where one sunbeam stops and another starts. We are like waves in the ocean, thinking we’re separate from other waves. There’s really no place where one wave stops and another starts.

1:02:27 When I was in New Mexico many years ago, and I was in this gorgeous aspen grove and I remember a friend telling me, you know, Marianne, this is the largest living thing on the earth. I said, what are you talking about? And this man was telling me how aspens are actually all connected. The aspen grove is connected in its root system. So up above the ground they seem to be separate trees, but underneath the ground they are one system.

1:02:56 We’re like, if you see a wheel, okay, and we’re all separate spokes on the wheel. Well, who are we really? If you identify us with our position on the rim, we’re all separate. But if you see our ultimate identity as who we are at the beginning point of the hub, we’re one point. So someone like Carl Jung articulated that there are what he called archetypes within the collective unconscious.

1:03:23 That is the idea that there are mental archetypes within your mind, and mental archetypes within mind that are the same the idea of the Christ mind, or the one mind, the cosmic mind, whatever name you want to give it, is the idea that, not if you go deep enough into your mind and deep enough into mine, not only are there images we share, we share them because we are the same mind. So once you see that, then you do see that whatever I do to you, I’m doing to myself. That’s why, if I judge you, I will be judged.

1:03:57 You will either judge me back, attack me back, or even if you’re too enlightened to do that, I will feel like you did. So the change is everything. When that becomes your mental filter, and that’s what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is a shift from body identification to spirit identification. So it’s a shift from attachment to the three-dimensional reality as your mental filter, upon which you rest your sense of self, your sense of who other people are, and upon which you make all your decisions about how you act in the world, to another mental filter entirely.

1:04:32 Once I know that what I do to you I’m doing to myself, it’ll just take a little time. Everything changes within the body identification, what I give to you I no longer have. Within the spiritual identification, I only get to keep what I give away. It’s a complete shift, and it’s actually the metaphysical meaning of what it meant when Jesus turned the other cheek. See it with a different eye.

1:04:54 So this, this conversation is no longer fringe. You know, I’ve been around my career, I’ve been doing this for over 30 years. Today this whole conversation around enlightenment has become so mainstreamed that now you’re FRS if you don’t know what we’re talking about. But how do people get enlightenment? Because the books are everywhere.

1:05:16 We’re now living at a time. This is no longer esoteric information that’s kept away from the masses. This is extraordinary. There are so many books and there are so many tapes, and there’s so many teachings, even in the space of my own career. When I used to talk, let’s say 30 years ago, about principles of metaphysics, spirituality, A Course in Miracles, downtown LA.

1:05:35 Yeah, that’s right. People used to go, or anywhere in the country, oh, this is so amazing. I’ve never heard of this. I’ve never thought this way before. That’s not the tenor of this moment.

1:05:46 Today audiences are more likely to go isn’t that interesting? That’s what she’s talking about. That’s exactly what we were talking about last night. We’ve all read the same books. Now there’s a tipping point.

1:05:56 We’ve all listened to the same tapes. The era of data collection is over. There are enough of us who have the basics of spiritual abstract knowledge. Now we have to take that journey without distance, from up here to here. We have to practice it.

1:06:12 You know, I always say my life works really well when I practice what I preach. If I don’t practice it, my life isn’t any better, or transformed. You can’t just know it. So enough people know it now. You know, now we just have to act on it, and that’s where the rubber meets the road, and life can be hard and challenging which is why I’m only a brown belt.

1:06:32 We’ve done episodes here about the psychedelic experience. Yes, some, which I was really wondering why I did it, because I thought I could never go back to the banking world. I did it before and after ayahuasca episode. I’ve talked about other psychedelic compounds, and for me, the growing up as a young American capitalist, this was the best way for me to really get an opening and to look at this whole idea that we are one, and for me to really get it. I mean, I had heard about it.

1:07:01 I had meditated. I probably listened to you speak about it, but there, it showed me in the course of an hour or a few hours that this is real, or what this is isn’t real, like you said. How do you feel about the psychedelic experience? Well, a couple things. First of all, I’m definitely a child of my generation.

1:07:21 I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. Having said that, you’re asking me to talk about what is in my country illegal substances, so there’s a limit to where I’m going to go with that. I also feel that um, the time of my youth were not only more innocent times. The drugs themselves, um, today, unless you are talking about very safe and sacred experiences, and within, hopefully, a legal context, which in some countries it is. Yeah, churches in the United States, people are dying.

1:08:07 People are, well, they were dying before, but this is, this is now um, some really terrible things are happening. I actually think the legalization of drugs would help this. Are you talking about specific incidents of people overdosing on drugs, not just over, but what drugs are laced with now? Okay, so what you’re taking, what you think you’re taking, may or may not be what you’re taking, on levels, and some of the drugs that are out there, that are truly dangerous.

1:08:37 Well, I guess my point was, is that you said, these days when you talk about that enlightened conversation, people are like, oh yeah, that’s what we’ve been talking about. That’s what we heard about today in London, a, um, a housewife in Chelsea might actually go on an ayahuasca ceremony, because these days it’s like, considered, oh yeah, people do that. They get views into consciousness, whereas 30 years ago, if you said you were taking LSD, you had to be at Berkeley.

1:09:00 And so I’m wondering if that’s also catching up, where the world is like, okay, we need to talk about this, and some of us might go and experience this. Complicated. I think that The War on Drugs has failed, though, and once the War on Drugs is over, I’ll have a more open conversation with you. Fair enough. Okay, yeah.

1:09:24 The War on Drugs is a whole other fascinating conversation. Yeah, that brings all sorts of other issues up. I just want to make sure that I cover some of the other spiritual things you talk about, because I think they’re all super important. You know, you talk about bless more than blame and just when it comes to dealing with people on a regular basis. And also you talk about letting us want what we want, and I think your knowledge is really precious, so I was just wondering if you could tell us just a little bit about those concepts, because I think when people watch this and listen to this, something will click in their brains and it might be about the enlightenment piece, or it might be about something like here.

1:09:59 Well, they’ll look at their life differently. So could you tell us what you mean when you say want what you want? Okay, this want what you want thing, you know, we have disconnected ourselves from our natural intelligence. Every cell in the body has a natural guidance system and it guides it to become that which it is meant to be, in order to collaborate with other cells, in order that together they might serve the healthy functioning of the organ and the organism of which they are part.

1:10:31 And when a cell has disconnected, for whatever reason, from that larger matrix of collaboration and goes off to do its own thing, that’s called malignancy. That’s what cancer is. And that malignancy applies to consciousness as much as it applies to the body. So what has happened to humanity is that we have disconnected from our natural intelligence. We have disconnected from our internal guidance system.

1:10:56 That is what genuine religious experience does. Religio, to bind back. That is what meditation does. It’s like a chiropractic adjustment of the soul. It takes you back to your own internal knowing.

1:11:09 Now, until you are in the space of your own internal knowing you do not know the difference between appetite and desire. you do not know the difference between freedom and license. But when you are deeply aligned with your spirit, through prayer, through meditation, through spiritual practice, through really trying to do this stuff, when you feel a desire, when you feel a calling. It’s like we were talking about my running for office before there was a time when I felt the calling, right?

1:11:36 I don’t feel that calling now, but when you can trust, I was speaking to a friend of mine earlier today. He feels very strongly. He was reading an article in the Washington Post and it drove him nuts, and he sent me this long email criticizing the article, and I said, if you feel so strongly about this, do something. You could begin with a letter to the editor of the Washington Post. You must act on this if it’s your genuine passion.

1:12:06 So what we have too much of in our world is people acting on their appetites, acting on their genuine desire, their genuine calling, their genuine passion. And when you allow, you know, someone said to me once many years ago, you know, Marianne, you’re very hard on yourself, and the reason you’re very hard on yourself is because you’re too easy on yourself. I was always making mistakes, but if I was more aligned with my spirit, I wouldn’t be making these mistakes, like I was.

1:12:32 So I think that many people, because they’re so at the effect of their own superficial appetites, don’t know to respect their deeper desire And when you know that you’re not just coming from the turbulence of appetite and you feel the cing of deep desire, then you trust it and you’re willing to inhabit the space. This is what I want. This is what I want, because my soul feels that it’s spreading its wings to inhabit that which is naturally mine. I think a lot of people don’t allow themselves to want the career that they want.

1:13:05 They don’t allow themselves to want the money that they want. They don’t allow themselves to want the dream that they want. Who am I to have that dream? But the same people who won’t allow themselves to have the genuine dream are people who are allowing themselves too much to have every passing fantasy and fancy And that can apply to entrepreneurship, business, capitalism. Absolutely, absolutely, absolutely.

1:13:28 And I think that when you, I don’t think anybody really, at the deepest level, wants to rob a bank. I don’t think anyone at the deepest level wants to do harm. So when you really do dwell at the deepest level, and in the deepest waters of your soul, you do desire, but you desire because it’s angels pushing you from behind. It’s a real calling of your soul, and then you allow yourself to want it. Then you allow yourself to want it.

1:13:52 Yeah, because when I have this, I’m going to do so much good with this. So stop apologizing for those desires. Exactly. Okay, desire, as opposed to just appetite Okay. I spent the day yesterday with a movement specialist.

1:14:06 His name is Ido Portal. He’s from Israel. He’s a really fascinating, very spiritual guy. I think you would like him very much. We walked around London outside, and we recorded it all and spoke for two hours, and it was really amazing.

1:14:16 At the end he said, Brian, he said today was a good day. He said it was a great day, and he said today is also a good day to die. Mhm. And I was like, what do you mean, Ido? And he said today is also a good day to die, and I think he was quoting Musashi from the Five Rings, the Japanese swordsman, and I believe he was saying that he’s content with his life now, as in that if he died now that would be okay.

1:14:43 And it’s had me thinking for the last 24 hours. And you’re going to get the brunt of this, but would this be a good day for you to die? Or is there unfinished things or things that you still want to take care of, or other pieces that you need to figure out in terms of what I think he meant? Yes. But my daughter is not ready.

1:15:08 I don’t want to die until I feel that, and I think most people who are parents feel this way, and I think many people I think my own parents were this way. I think my father waited till all of us, he knew we were okay so for that reason you have that. And she, I don’t, I don’t want to go yet, but in terms of what he meant, I not only understand it, but I have sought to live you know the saying that I think is from the talet Sad is he who dies not having sung his song I want to feel that I’ve sung my song.

1:15:52 I don’t think that I have sung all my song, but I feel I have sung a song, and I do feel. I look at a lot of young women, particularly young people, particularly all these young women, and I know that they’re… I have that wonderful, blessed, privileged feeling that I know much of what I feel has been my song is now sung by others, will be sung by others in their way, their song So I have that great satisfaction, but I still would like to think I have some more music in me.

1:16:28 I think I do. I’ve been thinking about that. If I’m, if I was, if today is a good day for me to die. Um, and I’m not ready yet, but it makes me want to live tomorrow as if I want to get to that day. And so I agree, it’s like you need to sing that song and get you need to sing it sooner than later.

1:16:46 You know, I’m older than you are, and Carl Jung said that failure to deal with the topic of death robs the second half of life of its meaning. You haven’t hit 50 yet. Um, I think one of the dysfunctions of our society is we peripheralized that conversation and I think allowing for the enormity of the conversation actually enriches life. So I’m old enough that that is part of my internal dialogue, and there is a point in life where you are thinking in terms of cleaning up the campsite.

1:17:19 You see something over the horizon, but it’s not macabre if you have a spiritual perspective. If you don’t have a spiritual perspective, it must be absolutely terrifying, but from a spiritual perspective it’s all part of the richness of the experience, of the blessing of being human. What a blessing it is to have this experience. Next five years, say you come back here, 2020, we sit down what have you been up to? What will you tell me you’ve been up to for, you know, for those five years?

1:17:46 Brian, this is what I did. I don’t know if she would want me to say this, but I kind of hope I’ll be a grandmother. I hope, my pressure, no pressure. Well, I don’t think I want it any more than she wants it. Um, I, I look, I really look forward to that experience.

1:18:04 I love children. My only real fundamental regret in life is that I didn’t have more of them. So I really look forward to that chapter. Really look forward to that. Hope she’s watching this.

1:18:21 Um, you spent a lot of time with a lot of, you know, big personalities and big, you know, people around the world. You met the Dalai Lama. Um, what was he like? Spending time with Oprah, I watched the clip where you made her cry I was, and you really seem like you had a breakthrough with her there. And the great thing about her is she’s so real.

1:18:38 Um, I was thinking about the other day, I was like, why is Oprah so successful? And it probably comes down to just that, right? She is what you see is what you get. I mean, she’s She is off stage, who she is on stage. She is off camera, who she is on camera and my training, and I’m sure you feel this way in your work too because if people do not feel real from you, they’re not going to be real with you.

1:19:06 And so part of your expertise and talent is seeing through to the real. In my work, for instance, I think of the kind of work that I do. You know, I always say people don’t come to me because things are going well. So my entire career is, it’s kind of like an AA meeting. You have a mogul sitting next to a homeless person.

1:19:29 I actually had the experience, on the same night, of talking to a president of the United States and the grieving mother of a mass murderer who was dealing with the fact that this was her child. So, and it was so amazing, and I thought, what is God showing me? And I, to the best of my ability, what I can come up with is person in stress and pain, person in stress and pain. To God there is no difference, and that’s my training. It’s my mental training So you know from your own work that people are just people.

1:20:04 It’s this illusion created around celebrity and so forth, that makes us ever think otherwise. Yeah, they’re just normal people that have done extraordinary things, or extraordinary things have happened to them. That’s how they usually end up in this chair. But, well, also, you know, I heard, and the same is true of people who have not It’s not just that the president or the big mogul is no different than the quote-unquote average person. It’s that the deeply poor person or person in prison is no different either.

1:20:45 I mean, I remember hearing Muhammad Yunus say about the very poor, that they would like bonsai trees, that they are just like every other tree. The bonsai tree is just like every other tree, but it has these limitations. And so the deeply poor, it’s not like they’re any less smart, or that they have any fewer dreams or hopes or aspirations. It’s that their conditions are such that they cannot. So it’s not just the most brilliant person is no different.

1:21:12 It’s that the most disadvantaged person is no less brilliant And so that’s the point of seeing beyond the illusion We’re all either we’re all children of God or we’re not. I remember once I was asked to talk to these. It was a program for adjudicated kids in Oklahoma, and adjudicated means they’ve been kicked out of school. They’ve been, they’re considered at risk. If we don’t catch them now, they’re going to be in prison.

1:21:42 That’s the only trajectory. How do we rescue them right now? That’s what this school was about And I sat down with these kids, and I went around the circle and asked them what their dreams were and I could have been at the fanciest prep school. What these kids wanted one wanted to be a pediatric cardiologist. One wanted to be a great novelist I mean, the dreams in the people.

1:22:05 So it’s not just that the person who is the most famous, or the most, has achieved the most, has the same pain as everyone else. Those who have achieved nothing have the same dreams as everyone else. Forgiveness, in that clip with Oprah, you talked about 30 days, forgive someone for five minutes in the morning, pray for their happiness, pray for their happiness. Yeah, what did you say? You said, pray for their happiness until, said go ahead.

1:22:36 Well, if you have difficulty with someone, I always say pray for their happiness for five minutes a day for 30 days. Either they will change, or you won’t care. That’s what will happen within 30 days. Either their behavior will shift. Why Because they will have felt this.

1:22:50 It will be subconscious. They will have no idea why. They will have no idea it came from you, but they will feel loved in the places that they do not now feel loved which is why they make these mistakes to begin with and perpetrate what they perpetrate. So it will help transform them. At the same time, it doesn’t matter, because even if it did not have that particular effect in their particular case, on their particular wound, it will.

1:23:16 If you pray for someone’s happiness, it will have an effect on their life, whether or not it affects the particular behavior, which impacts you, it won’t matter, because on a spiritual level what you give away is what you get to keep. So by praying for your happiness, I’m actually praying for my happiness. So I’m lifted to a level that then, if your behavior doesn’t change, it won’t affect me the way it is. The issue is not just your behavior, but how it affects me And your real self is not at the effect of lovelessness, because your real self is only love.

1:23:47 You only give love. You only take love, take in love. You weren’t created to be at the effect of lovelessness So when praying for someone else, I myself am lifted to that enlightened place where the turbulence of the world does not disturb my inner peace. And you also said that if there is that miracle coming to you that if you’re not ready to receive it, because if you’re not in that space it won’t come to you, and you had this concept about it being in a file.

1:24:14 Could you talk about that? This is to me my favorite part of A Course in Miracles. First of all, the file issue, which is not specifically from the course, but the issue here is, like, think of your mind as a computer. Divine will, God’s will, means love’s thought. That is what you are, loving thought.

1:24:32 That is right divine action. In any situation, it is that which is guided by loving thought. That is an undeletable file in our computer. The problem is we don’t usually download it. We think of life as a blank document, and I have to write on it, rather than realizing, no, all I have to do in any given instant is download the undeletable file and allow that to be impressed on my subconscious that then the perfect words and actions will be placed on that blank document.

1:25:00 Now, the principle from A Course in Miracles, and by the way, you know how sometimes when you delete a really big not delete, but when you download a really big file and it takes time and you have to watch that little bar that’s what meditation is. You’re downloading. That’s even become popular jargon. I had a download this morning, right? And so in meditation you’re like downloading that energy.

1:25:24 When in both the Jewish Star of David and the Christian cross you see the visual symbol for the intersection of the vertical and the horizontal. So you’re on the earth, but you’re downloading the thoughts of heaven, i.e., higher awareness of our oneness and it imprints on your subconscious. Now, the principle from the course that you referred to, which I love just from a human perspective, because I’ve made so many mistakes in my own life. A Course in Miracles says, in a moment where you made a mistake by definition means you were not guided by love.

1:25:56 You were not aligned with your higher mind. So you could have had a miracle, because miracles occur naturally as expressions of love. So you could have had the effect of the cause, of which was total love. You could have had that, but you didn’t. You made another choice.

1:26:11 That’s not what you downloaded, but this is what the course says The miracle you could have had is held in trust for you until you were ready to receive it. So had this relationship, and it could have been great, but you were such a jerk, or you were so needy, or you were so controlling, or you were so angry, or you were so judgmental, or you were so whatever, you blew that. But once you atone for your mistakes recognize your part, do, through personal growth, recovery, spirituality, therapy, all the things we do.

1:26:41 Oh, I get what I did wrong I’ve atoned, I’ve made amends, I’ve done what I can, I’m really seeking to change, that exact possibility will reappear in your life. It might be a different person, a different situation but that miracle is still yours. You didn’t download it because that wasn’t where your consciousness was. But as your consciousness does align itself with truth, then all that you could have had, that’s why a lot of people, when they get sober, all these fantastic things start to happen.

1:27:10 Well, the fantastic things that started to happen were all the fantastic things that were not allowed to happen when they were using and drinking So there are a lot of times in life where you feel like other people’s lives, or my life, could have been constantly improving, but I was so lost in my own personal darkness that my life was just a flatline Yeah, that’s true, but then once you start the spiritual path, you start making this direct vertical ascent, because you start receiving all these miracles you had denied yourself for all those years. Yeah, that hits me really powerfully. I’m sure you have some people that are like, yeah Um, so you’re describing my life before London Real, and then after London Real, and about a year in I was like wow, these wonderful things are happening to me.

1:27:49 I’m meeting all these great people, warm people, that never happened to me before Exactly. I get it. That’s exactly right. You’re living in the space where they can. It’s a space of possibility.

1:27:59 It’s a space that invites good things. Before, if you’re living a life that deflects the good, why are you so surprised that the good’s not here? Every judgmental thought, every obsession with past or future rather than living fully in the present every blame rather than blessing, every sale rather than service, every ambition rather than inspiration. Why are you so surprised? What’s the mystery here?

1:28:27 Let’s talk about the quote that is quoted so often, and you sometimes get credit for, you sometimes don’t, when you wrote that passage in the book, did you know it was something? powerful. That passage is one paragraph from A Return to Love. Right? I always say, if you like the paragraph, you’d love the book.

1:28:45 There’s so many paragraphs in that book. No, and neither do I have any idea how that urban myth got started. I have no idea how, how, who, what. Nobody has ever come up to me and said, I’m the one who took that paragraph and misattributed it to Nelson Mandela. I was living, I was not living, but I was visiting London at the time of his inauguration, on live TV.

1:29:12 First of all, it was two years. My book came out in ’92. His inauguration was in ’94. Um, an African man who comes out of 25 years in prison would he say, who am I to be fabulous? I, I mean, so I don’t know how it happened.

1:29:32 I would have, of course, been honored if I had been quoted by Nelson Mandela, but I simply wasn’t, and his office says that there is absolutely no record of his ever having quoted those words. That’s what it says on the website of the Mandela Foundation. So I’d be the first to. So yeah, but he simply didn’t. It’s an urban myth.

1:29:54 So no, I did not, that I know of. But you know that book, Return to Love, the subtitle is Reflections on the principles of A Course in Miracles. So I understand the enthusiasm about that paragraph. Like, I understand the enthusiasm about all the points I make in that book, because that’s why I’m a Course in Miracles student. I’m enthusiastic about that too.

1:30:15 So the principle that it’s not your darkness that frightens you. Your darkness is actually a perverse comfort zone. It’s your light that terrifies you, because that’s the end of your ego. That does not come from me. That idea that it is your light and not your darkness that frightens you is simply a principle of A Course in Miracles.

1:30:34 So with that book I tried my best to express basic principles of the course to the best of my ability. But I mean, I’m very happy that the principle has brought comfort and hope to many, but I think it’s one of many principles in the book, or in the course, that to me, all the principles you and I have talked about are just as exciting, right? But that one really speaks to people. Apparently it does. I, so, I had in that chair about four or five months ago Chris Eubank, who was, I think, 10 years undefeated, five years as a very, um, ostentatious British boxer originally born in Jamaica.

1:31:15 He got up and was shadow boxing in here. He’s a very incredible man, and he quoted that right in front of me. I didn’t even know what he was doing. He just quoted it from heart and stared at me, and while we did it, and we did a whole video about it, and we, and so it’s obviously very powerful. And so then he said Nelson Mandela had written it.

1:31:33 I think he did, and then later we corrected it on our YouTube video and said it’s actually Marianne Williamson. I think most places on the internet now, the word has gotten out, I think So, but it obviously really affected people a lot, and I agree, I don’t know if that’s necessarily any more brilliant than some of the things you talked about here, but it’s up there. Yeah, it’s well, it’s certainly that concept. I just, the principles of the course, which is just one statement.

1:31:56 There’s one truth with a capital T and it’s spoken many different ways, some religious, some secular. The course is just one statement. It doesn’t claim to be better or worse than any other. If it’s for you, you know it. But I do find the ideas stupendous, obviously, and I, enthusing about them, is easy.

1:32:16 Can I ask you a couple questions about, you know, your personal routines I like to call it your success secrets. Is there any kind of a daily routine which has guaranteed you repeated success over the years, something you noticed maybe five, ten years ago where you were like, you know, as long as I do this, all these things happen. You travel the world. I’m following you on YouTube as you travel the world you know over the years that you kind of look back and you’re like, that really changed my way.

1:33:13 Was there anything when you were a young girl that you were like, I saw that person speak or I got up in church, or in class, for the first time, and Bobby Kennedy and Gloria Steinem. Yeah, when I was a teenager, Bobby Kennedy wow. Um, Gloria Steinem, and then as I learned more about him, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Thomas Jefferson. Do you remember when Bobby Kennedy died? What was that like?

1:33:52 I remember falling asleep. We didn’t know if he was dead yet and waking up, and Frank Mankiewicz had announced that he had died. I was a teenager. You know, the worst part of the deaths of Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King is that the things we most feared would happen because they died did, whoever wanted them dead, boy, they knew what they were doing. And they, whoever that was, were successful at dispersing a generation.

1:34:35 And there were, very loud, those bullets psychically struck a generation, not just with the Kennedys and King, but also with the two students at Kent State. Boy that was in ’68 as well. Same, well, right in there. Actually, no, Nixon was president, so it was after ’68 I don’t know if it was the late ’60s or the early ’70s, but boy, that really there was a loud unspoken message: you will, the protest will stop now, um, you will do whatever you want within the private sector, but leave the public sector to whoever wants to control it, so bad that they’re willing to kill in order to do so.

1:35:18 And we did, and this is, look at the world today. We put our talents and our ability and our genius into the private sector. The private sector, we’re booming you know, in terms of ingenuity, technology, excitement, creativity, here in England, at home. I mean, it’s amazing but the public sector, could things be worse? Well, they could be, and they’re on the road to being, if we do not change the trajectory.

1:35:52 So I think that for many of us who were, you know, a lot of us were very young. Like I said, I was 15, 16, 17 years old so you’re young, you’re not able to take that role yourself, and those who were holding aloft those philosophical visions within the political field were literally, literally shot and killed in front of our eyes. But I think we have now come, it’s like you were talking about, good day to die, we’ve come to a point in our lives where, for many of us, the thought of dying, knowing in our gut that we didn’t really do what we came here to do is actually scarier to us than the thought of them killing us.

1:36:34 If we do So once you feel in life like, I’ve been to the party, so I can’t, you know, I understand young people. I don’t understand a young person who is not an activist around food. I don’t understand a young person who is not an environmental activist. I don’t understand a young person today not being an activist, because this is your future. It’s counterintuitive, isn’t it?

1:36:59 The older you get, you have less time, you should maybe care less, but you almost care more. You feel the urgency more. Um, but there’s something that happens with age. Somebody told me when you turn 50 is the age at which you don’t care what other people think anymore, and as you get older than 50 it’s even beyond, you don’t care what other people think. It’s that you must say what you think because otherwise you will die with your song still in you, because what you honestly think, what you honestly feel, that is your song, that is your music.

1:37:34 I’m trying to replay in my mind what ’68 felt like when you see, you know, Bobby Kennedy with all these, like, big new ideas we’re talking. He was 43 years old. Martin Luther King was 39 years old. Think how young these people were. Young.

1:37:49 Think of all the gifts that they never gave us, and how different at least my country would have been had people such as they survived. Must have made you feel almost shameful in your own country that you would allow this to happen? Of course, of course. I mean, don’t, I mean, you’re an American, you I know this is your adopted home, but of course you know that there’s a deep shame. Yeah, the closest thing I can think of, of a thing that I’ve experienced, that is, when, like, Obama was running and people here were like, oh you know, he might not make it to the presidency, and I was just like, well, no, they’re going to protect him, but I was like, if something ever happened, just the amount of shame I would feel that we didn’t at least get to see how this played out, and the pride that we felt when he was elected.

1:38:29 I think that there was a lot of prayer for him, a lot of prayer for him when he was running. A lot of people were deeply aware of the possibilities of anybody running for president, but particularly a Black man running for president at that time. Um, I think the whole world, we felt, Americans felt like partly we’re making up, you know, see, see this good thing we just did. Um, great pride in his presidency. Some of us do not feel that it is aligned with our deepest hopes for what it would be, but certainly the campaign was a moment of glory.

1:39:05 Yeah, it was. I guess we’ll have that when you were talking about, you know, the Trumpisms earlier, about the realness. I, I was just thinking about kind of the generic Obama speech you get sometimes. He’s a good speaker, but I always feel like I know what he’s going to say before he does. And so at this point, at this point, yeah.

1:39:20 Um, I always ask everyone here at the end a few questions, and I’m going to ask you the same. Okay. If you could make a phone call to the 20-year-old Marianne, and give that young woman a bit of advice. I don’t know if you’d moved to LA or not Um, what would you tell her? Relax, enjoy your youth you look better than you think, and the future will take care of itself.

1:39:47 Were you a very intense young lady? Yeah, very driven, very active, very idealist Well, I didn’t, you know, I was not relaxed, and I didn’t have a context of faith yet, really. I didn’t know that I could afford to surrender, and that just as the acorn is programmed to be the oak tree, that I’m programmed to be the best that I can be I think the 20s are hard. I think the 20s are hard for most people. Yeah, yeah.

1:40:24 Um, on that same note, what’s the best advice you’ve ever received in your life? Could be business or personal or political. Is there something that comes to mind? Get over yourself. That’s number one.

1:40:40 Number two, when you’re at a business meeting, you don’t have to say anything just listen. You don’t owe them a response right away. And in everything, remember that everyone is as wounded and vulnerable as you and wants to be loved just as much as you, and has probably suffered just as much as you. And don’t forget that it’s amazing how much I see the need for human connection with what I do, because we put these pieces out that are, you know, an hour, 90 minutes long, and people come to them like glue.

1:41:18 Um, and it’s almost, in a world that’s ultra connected they get real connection when they hear, you know, two people talk for that period of time, and I’m, time and time again, I’m reminded that we just crave a connection that we’re not really getting to enough of to the 20-year-old that’s out there, the 20-year-old version of Marianne that’s watching us now that wants to you know, learn to be enlightened, or learn this path of forgiveness, or not forget this after they watch it and watch the next video and really go there and try to bless and not blame Or even grow up to be one day. What advice do you give to them? What are a couple parting thoughts of what they, that you can do?

1:41:59 Well, first of all, obviously I don’t want them to grow up to be me. They, pansies in the garden and birds of paradise and roses and they’re all perfect, so, and they know that. The issue is not to grow up and be me. It’s grow up and be the best expression of themselves, but I’m sure they know that Um, my book, Return to Love, has been, I think, would have been helpful to me at 20 you know, there are my books, there are other people’s books who write the same kinds of thing I do.

1:42:24 For me, my talks are live streamed for free every Monday, and people can just go to marianne.com and register, and you get the link for 72 hours. So anybody who is interested in the particular expression that is me, go to marianne.com. It’s everywhere and I’m just one of thousands, and more than thousands, of people who, on any given day, if your ears are open people that you encounter. Some people that you might just encounter for five minutes everybody has something valuable to give you.

1:42:56 Once you really, you know, I think it was Einstein who said, he did, he said either everything’s a miracle or nothing is a miracle. So what I would say to that 20-year-old is be alert and be aware of the miracles that are around you. Most of us miss out on life by not showing up. It’s been a weakness in my life, in my relationships with places and with people. It’s like I get there late.

1:43:21 It’s like I’m already gone, or they’re gone, gone before I go. Oh my God, so much was available there. And that’s what I look at sometimes with people. What are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?

1:43:33 Life is right here, but we have an idea of what it should look like, or I’ll show up for the next job. I’ll show up for the next person once you realize that life is programmed perfectly wherever you are. This is it. This is the job. This is the person be here now, as Ram Dass said.

1:43:48 So much opens up. That’s what I didn’t know when I was 20, but we all learn what we learn when we learn it. That’s part of it. It’s the journey which is our tagline. It’s about the journey.

1:43:58 Take a pause, look around you. There are actually miracles everywhere And you have the coolest URL in the world, marianne.com. I love that. It shows you, you were thinking early. Well, somebody around me was, I’ve hugely enjoyed this.

1:44:13 I’ve hugely enjoyed preparing for this. I think I have the coolest job in the world, when I get to learn about someone like you and then see you Um, one thing I think I didn’t realize for a long time, until I started doing this show, is the true power of the female energy. And when I see you speak, and when I see you own the stage in Salt Lake or in Boston or a bunch of the other things you do, I feel this, I don’t know, this kind of caveman pride and then I feel like you have so much energy, where so much of my male life I associated that with the male dominant energy, and so it really speaks to me on a deep level And I get to meet a lot of people, and I’m not always impressed with all of them, but I’m very impressed with you.

1:44:57 Thank you. And you’re a badass Texan. Thank you. And I look forward to reading more of your articles. Um, you’re really well written.

1:45:06 I love how you quote Lincoln all the time, and you’re Huffington Post articles. Um, yeah, I just look forward to reading more of your stuff and watching your videos. Thank you. I greatly admire you as well, and thank you. It was an honor to be on your show.

1:45:16 Okay, come back and see us next time you’re in London. Okay, all right. Thank you. you’re great. Thank you so much.