Williamson Quotes

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Each of us has a unique part to play in the healing of the world.

Children are happy because they don't have a file in their minds called "All the Things That Could Go Wrong.

It takes courage...to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.

And no one will listen to us until we listen to ourselves.

Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world.

We are not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we're not extending in the present.

Until we have seen someone's darkness, we don't really know who they are. Until we have forgiven someone's darkness, we don't really know what love is.

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn. The spiritual journey is the unlearning of fear and prejudices and the acceptance of love back in our hearts. Love is the essential reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us.

There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do.

Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and ablities were used in a way that served others.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, handsome, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we need to worry that we might have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.

You may believe that you are responsible for what you do, but not for what you think. The truth is that you are responsible for what you think, because it is only at this level that you can exercise choice. What you do comes from what you think.

In the absence of love, we began slowly but surely to fall apart.

We can always choose to perceive things differently. We can focus on what's wrong in our life, or we can focus on what's right.

Everything we do is infused with the energy with which we do it. If we're frantic, life will be frantic. If we're peaceful, life will be peaceful. And so our goal in any situation becomes inner peace.

...available people are the ones who are dangerous, because they confront us with the possibility of real intimacy.

When a woman rises up in glory, her energy is magnetic and her sense of possibility contagious.

Something amazing happens when we surrender and just love. We melt into another world, a realm of power already within us. The world changes when we change. The world softens when we soften. The world loves us when we choose to love the world.

In every community, there is work to be done. In every nation, there are wounds to heal. In every heart, there is the power to do it.

Every ending is a new beginning. Through the grace of God, we can always start again. (Page 120.)

Always seek less turbulent skies. Hurt. Fly above it. Betrayal. Fly above it. Anger. Fly above it. You are the one who is flying the plane.

Just like a sunbeam can't separate itself from the sun, and a wave can't separate itself from the ocean, we can't separate ourselves from one another. We are all part of a vast sea of love, one indivisible divine mind.

Whenever we feel lost, or insane, or afraid, all we have to do is ask for His help. The help might not come in the form we expected, or even thought we desired, but it will come, and we will recognize it by how we feel. In spite of everything, we will feel at peace.

Do what you love. Do what makes your heart sing. And NEVER do it for the money, Go to work to spread joy.

I could recognise his soul in mine as much as he could find me in his. Our sole existences seemed to have been for this very moment when nothing else mattered.

Spiritual progress is like a detoxification.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

Here's the news: I am going to sue the Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company, manufacturers of Pall Mall cigarettes, for a billion bucks! Starting when I was only twelve years old, I have never chain-smoked anything but unfiltered Pall Malls. And for many years now, right on the package, Brown & Williamson have promised to kill me. But I am eighty-two. Thanks a lot, you dirty rats. The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

To be a princess is to play at life. To be a queen is to be a serious player...The purpose of life as a woman is to ascend to the throne and rule with heart.

The way of the miracle-worker is to see all human behavior as one two things: either love, or a call for love.

May my heart be your shelter, and my arms be your home.

Until we have met the monsters in ourselves, we keep trying to slay them in the outer world. And we find that we cannot. For all darkness in the world stems from darkness in the heart. And it is there that we must do our work.

Nothing binds you except your thoughts; nothing limits you except your fear; and nothing controls you except your beliefs.

When a woman conceives her true self, a miracle occurs and life around her begins again.

Love in your mind produces love in your life. This is the meaning of heaven. Fear in your mind produces fear in your life. This is the meaning of hell.

There is no single effort more radical in its potential for saving the world than a transformation of the way we raise our children.

A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passer her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.

Rather than accepting that we are the loving beings that He created, we have arrogantly thought that we could create ourselves, and then create God. Because we are angry and judgmental, we have projected those characteristics onto Him. We have made up a God in our image. But God remains who He is and always has been: the energy, the thought of unconditional love.

Spiritual growth involves giving up the stories of your past so the universe can write a new one.

Walk in the rain, smell flowers, stop along the way, build sandcastles, go on field trips, find out how things work, tell stories, say the magic words, trust the universe.

If a train doesn't stop at your station, then it's not your train.

My love for you won't stop with my leaving. Come an evening over the years, when you step outside your door and hear the wind blowing through the cottonwoods, that'll be me, thinking of you, whispering your name, and loving you.

I am a glorious child of God. I am joyful, serene, positive, and loving.

If I am never to have you again after this night, this moment, you will remain the wife of my soul. Keeper of my heart.

We're hallucinating. And that's what this world is: a mass hallucination, where fear seems more real than love. Fear is an illusion. Our craziness, paranoia, anxiety and trauma are literally all imagined.

A tulip doesn’t strive to impress anyone. It doesn’t struggle to be different than a rose. It doesn’t have to. It is different. And there’s room in the garden for every flower. You didn’t have to struggle to make your face different than anyone else’s on earth. It just is. You are unique because you were created that way. Look at little children in kindergarten. They’re all different without trying to be. As long as they’re unselfconsciously being themselves, they can’t help but shine. It’s only later, when children are taught to compete, to strive to be better than others, that their natural light becomes distorted.

In the Holy Relationship, it's understood that we all have unhealed places, and that healing is the purpose of our being with another person. We don't hide our weaknesses, but rather we understand that the relationship is a context for healing through mutual forgiveness.

The only thing missing in any situation is that in which you are not giving

Ego says, “Once everything falls into place, I'll feel peace.” Spirit says, “Find your peace, and then everything will fall into place.

People hear you on the level you speak to them from. Speak from your heart, and they will hear with theirs.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.

When we attach value to things that aren’t love—the money, the car, the house, the prestige—we are loving things that can’t love us back. We are searching for meaning in the meaningless.

When infants aren't held, they can become sick, even die. It's universally accepted that children need love, but at what age are people supposed to stop needing it? We never do. We need love in order to live happily, as much as we need oxygen in order to live at all.

Right. Lack of opportunities," Daddy says. "Corporate America don't bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain't quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don't prepare us well enough. That's why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don't get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It's easier to find some crack that it is the find a good school around here. "Now, think 'bout this," he says. "How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking 'bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don't know anybody with a private jet. Do you?" "No." "Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they're destroying our community," he says. "You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can't get jobs unless they're clean, and they can't pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That's the hate they're giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That's Thug Life.

Love is what we are born with. Fear is what we learn.

Being a one of a kind means we are automatically the best in the world at what we do.

It is our own thoughts that hold the key to miraculous transformation.

...there are four rules for miraculous work creation: Be positive. Send love. Have fun. Kick ass. Amen.

If our emotional stability is based on what other people do or do not do, then we have no stability. If our emotional stability is based on love that is changeless and unalterable, then we attain the stability of God.

We can't look to the world to restore our worth; we're here to restore our worth to the world. The world outside us can reflect our glory, but it cannot create it. It cannot crown us. Only God can crown us, and he already has.

There is no Mr. Right because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us, and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person.

To ask for another relationship, or another job, is not particularly helpful if we’re going to show up in the new situation exactly as we showed up in the last one.

...a miracles is a reasonable thing to ask for.

Dear God, I give this time of quiet to You. Please dissolve my thoughts of stress and fear And deliver me to the inner place Where all is peace and love. Amen.

Just make sure that the thing you're living for is worth dying for." --Levi

How a person seems to show up for us is intimately connected to how we choose to show up for them.

Thought is Cause; experience is Effect. If you don’t like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.

We must relinquish our passive observation of the world outside; we can open the door to the world we want. In understanding ourselves, we come to understand the world. In allowing ourselves to heal, we become the healers of the world. In praying for peace, we become bringers of peace. Thus we actualize the power within us to remedy the psychic wounds of humanity.

In that Holy Place where you tell Him everything and he understands; there are angels who stand in wait to hear his every command. How may they serve you and increase your joy?

Change is in the air, as old patterns fall away and new energies are emerging. Consciously release what needs to be released, and welcome with a full embrace the newness you've prayed for and so richly deserve.

Can the purpose of a relationship be to trigger our wounds? In a way, yes, because that is how healing happens; darkness must be exposed before it can be transformed. The purpose of an intimate relationship is not that it be a place where we can hide from our weaknesses, but rather where we can safely let them go. It takes strength of character to truly delve into the mystery of an intimate relationship, because it takes the strength to endure a kind of psychic surgery, an emotional and psychological and even spiritual initiation into the higher Self. Only then can we know an enchantment that lasts.

Only write from your own passion, your own truth. That's the only thing you really know about, and anything else leads you away from the pulse.

Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Respect your dream.

when we think we have things already figured out, we’re not teachable. Genuine insight can’t dawn on a mind that’s not open to receive it.

Looking for Mr. Right leads to desperation, because there is no Mr. Right. There is no Mr. Right, because there is no Mr. Wrong. There is whoever is in front of us and the perfect lessons to be learned from that person.

Dear God, I surrender this relationship to you,” means, “Dear God, let me see this person through your eyes.” In accepting the Atonement, we are asking to see as God sees, think as God thinks, love as God loves. We are asking for help in seeing someone’s innocence.

Surrender means, by definition, giving up attachment to results. When we surrender to God, we let go of our attachment to how things happen on the outside and we become more concerned with what happens on the inside.

Our self-perception determines our behavior. If we think we’re small, limited, inadequate creatures, then we tend to behave that way, and the energy we radiate reflects those thoughts no matter what we do. If we think we’re magnificent creatures with an infinite abundance of love and power to give, then we tend to behave that way. Once again, the energy around us reflects our state of awareness.

Love is a hero’s journey, and the hero’s journey is a noble but difficult path.

Love is to people what water is to plants.

We do not heal the past by dwelling there; we heal the past by living fully in the present. —MARIANNE WILLIAMSON

Your main character not only needs a goal, she need an inner desire.

In asking for miracles, we are seeking a practical goal: a return to inner peace. We’re not asking for something outside us to change, but for something inside us to change. We’re looking for a softer orientation to life.

Our triumph over sorrow is not that we can avoid it but that we can endure it. And therein lies our hope; that in spirit we might become bigger than the problems we face.

The Queen is coming to reclaim her girls.

People shouldn’t fear their prime ministers. Prime ministers should fear their people.

Something very beautiful happens to people when their world has fallen apart: a humility, a nobility, a higher intelligence emerges at just the point when our knees hit the floor. Perhaps, in a way, that's where humanity is now: about to discover we're not as smart as we thought we were, will be forced by life to surrender our attacks and defenses which avail us of nothing, and finally break through into the collective beauty of who we really are." [Facebook post, August 31, 2013]

From a mind filled with infinite love comes the power to create infinite possibilities. We have the power to think in ways that reflect and attract all the love in the world. Such thinking is called enlightenment. Enlightenment is not a process we work toward, but a choice available to us in any instant.

The highest prize we can receive for creative work is the joy of being creative. Creative effort spent for any other reason than the joy of being in that light filled space, love, god, whatever we want to call it, is lacking in integrity. . .

You are loved, and your purpose is to love.

Our power lies in remaining nonreactive.

The most powerful thought is a prayerful thought. When I'm praying for you, I am praying for my own peace of mind. I can only have for myself what I am willing to wish for you.

You must learn a new way to think before you can master a new way to be.

Angels are thoughts of God--to pray to an angel is to look to a level of pure thinking, divine thinking, and to ask that it replace our thoughts of fear. (Page 27.)

God is definitely out of the closet.

Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.” What that means is this: Love is real. It’s an eternal creation and nothing can destroy it. Anything that isn’t love is an illusion. Remember this, and you’ll be at

God gives us His strength by giving us His vision of things. Our seeing people as innocent is the only way to achieve God’s peace.

if the train doesn’t stop at your station, it’s not your train.

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment—or unlearning—of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us...There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you...We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

We lack faith in *what* exists within us because we lack faith in *Who* exists within us.

Where there is lack, God’s abundance is on the way. Hold on. Have faith. It’s coming.

A heartfire, Clementine my darlin', is when you want someone, when you need her so damn bad, not only in your bed but in your life, that you're willin' to burn--".

You need not apologize for being brilliant, talented, gorgeous, rich, or smart.

The name's Clem Williamson Snide. I am a private asshole.

Usually, when we think of power, we think of external power. And we think of powerful people as those who have made it in the world. A powerful woman isn’t necessarily someone who has money, but we think of her as someone with a boldness or a spark that makes her manifest in a dramatic way. When we think of a powerful man, we think of his ability to manifest abundance, usually money, in the world. Most people say that a powerful woman does best with a powerful man, that she needs someone who understands the bigness of her situation, a man who can meet her at the same or even greater level of power in the world. Now this is true, if power is defined as material abundance. A woman often faces cultural prejudice when she makes more money than a man, as does he. A woman who defines power by worldly standards can rarely feel totally relaxed in the arms of a man who doesn’t have it. If power is seen as an internal matter, then the situation changes drastically. Internal power has less to do with money and worldly position, and more to do than with emotional expansiveness, spirituality and conscious living… I used to think I needed a powerful man, someone who could protect me from the harshness and evils of the world. What I have come to realize is that…the powerful man I was looking for would be foremost, someone who supported me in keeping myself on track spiritually, and in so maintaining clarity within myself, that life would present fewer problems. When it did get rough, he would help me forgive. I no longer wanted somebody who would say to me, “Don’t worry honey, if they’re mean to you I’ll beat them up or buy them out.” Instead, I want someone who prays and meditates with me regularly so that fewer monsters from the outer world disturb me, and who when they do, helps me look within my own consciousness for answers, instead of looking to false power to combat false power. There’s a big difference between a gentle man and a weak man. Weak men make us nervous. Gentle men make us calm.

Our prayer is not simply, ‘Dear God, please send me a better job,’ but, ‘Dear God, enable me to see this situation differently, that this area of apparent lack might be healed inside my mind.

We all make mistakes, we all have fears, and we all have weaknesses. Behind all that is our essential self. When our essential self has made contact with another, the light is dazzling and would fill the universe. The challenge of enchantment is to remain faithful to that light, to believe in it when it is not so apparent. Then that light becomes an incandescent glow and it wraps itself around everything.

No conventional therapy can release us from a deep and abiding psychic pain. Through prayer we find what we cannot find elsewhere: a peace that is not of this world.

There is, inside all our heads, the ego’s rabid attack dog. It is purely vicious toward others and toward ourselves as well. Learning to control that dog, and ultimately to end its life, is the process and purpose of enlightened relationships.

We think we’re powerful because of what we’ve achieved rather than because of what we are.

...you're on this earth with a divine purpose: to rise to the level of your highest creative possibility, expressing all that you are intellectually, emotionally, psychologically, and physically in order to make the universe a more beautiful place.

As long as we remain vigilant at building our internal abundance—an abundance of integrity, an abundance of forgiveness, an abundance of service, an abundance of love—then external lack is bound to be temporary.

The only way to gain power in a world that is moving too fast is to learn to slow down. And the only way to spread one’s influence wide to learn how to go deep. The world we want for ourselves and our children will not emerge from electronic speed but rather from a spiritual stillness that takes root in our souls. Then, and only then, will we create a world that reflects the heart instead of shattering it.

You playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightening about shrinking so others won't feel insecure around you. As you let your own light shine, you indirectly give others permission to do the same.

growth can be messy.

Love will be our medicine.

There is nowhere you need go to find God, for God is within you. There is no one you need ask if you are good enough, for He has already established He is exceedingly well pleased.

We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.

You've done the bourgeois thing, perhaps, but let's not call that love.

But peace isn’t determined by circumstances outside us. Peace stems from forgiveness. Pain doesn’t stem from the love we’re denied by others, but rather from the love that we deny them.

Our greatest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? Your playing small does not serve the world. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

The famous passage from her book is often erroneously attributed to the inaugural address of Nelson Mandela. About the misattribution Williamson said, "Several years ago, this paragraph from A Return to Love began popping up everywhere, attributed to Nelson Mandela's 1994 inaugural address. As honored as I would be had President Mandela quoted my words, indeed he did not. I have no idea where that story came from, but I am gratified that the paragraph has come to mean so much to so many people.

Dear God, I surrender this situation to you. May it be used for your purposes. I ask only that my heart be open to give love and to receive love. May all the results unfold according to your will. Amen.” Whatever you do, do it for God.

I'm here to rape, and pillage, and run off with all of your spoons.

As long as there are ways we can serve, then we have a job to do.

Let's forgive the past and who we were then. Let's embrace the present and who we're capable of becoming. Let's surrender the future and watch miracles unfold.

The shift from fear to love is a miracle.

The moment that our real “issues” are exposed is simply when two people have the opportunity to go deeper, to explore further, to heal faster, to communicate more sincerely, to be more honest, and to love more truly.

How odd that we spend so much time treating the darkness, and so little time seeking the light. The ego loves to glorify itself by self-analysis, yet we do not get rid of darkness by hitting it with a baseball bat. We only get rid of darkness by turning on the light.

Forgiveness is “selective remembering”—a conscious decision to focus on love and let the rest go. But the ego is relentless—it is “capable of suspiciousness at best and viciousness at worst.

The miracle of love is expressed through other people. When a beloved is sent from God—and no one can tell you if they are, but the spirit within you—then they do hold the key to your soul’s liberation. God has given it to them.

May I be, this day, an instrument of love and healing.

Fear comes, but fear passes.

What I’ve learned of love, I’ve learned from you. I don’t believe in anything, but I believe in you.

The moment of surrender is not when life is over. It’s when it begins.

and you and I left with the same old question the sheer unspeakable strangeness of being here at all

We were taught that things like grades, being good enough, money, and doing things the right way, are more important than love.

Whether we choose to focus on the guilt in their personality, or the innocence in their soul, is up to us.

Kita tidak terbelenggu oleh cinta yang tidak kita terima di masa lalu, tetapi oleh cinta yang tidak kita ulurkan di saat sekarang

Men in our culture have been spoiled, treated with false reverence instead of respect.

We don't know how to be women because we were taught it was not OK to be girls. Our most natural impulses were thwarted and distorted.

If our prayer is “Dear God, please use me to be of service,” then that is what we will be. And it is not for us to judge either the size or value of our gifts. Our job is to try to get out of the way, to defer to the spirit moving within us and become open channels for the flow of God’s love.

No matter what I go through today, I need not fear. For God is all-powerful and God is here. I am never separate from the One who created me. There is nothing I can do to make Him turn his face away from me. I am loved, I am cared for, and I am totally safe in the arms of God.

Williamson Starr doesn't use slang - if a rapper would say it, she doesn't say it, even if her white friends do. Slang makes them cool. Slang makes her "hood". Williamson Starr holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she's the "angry black girl". Williamson Starr is approachable. No stank-eyes, none of that. Williamson Starr is no confrontational. Basically, Williamson Starr doesn't give anyone a reason to call her ghetto. I can't stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway.

Love makes us wake up in the morning with a sense of purpose and a flow of creative ideas. Love floods our nervous system with positive energy, making us far more attractive to prospective employers, clients, and creative partners. Love fills us with powerful charisma, enabling us to produce new ideas and new projects, even within circumstances that seem to be limited. Love leads us to atone for our errors and clean up the mess when we've made mistakes. Love leads us to act with impeccability, integrity, and excellence. Love leads us to serve, to forgive, and to hope. Those things are the opposite of a poverty consciousness; they're the stuff of spiritual wealth creation.

If, Your Highness, is a word that will steal your soul. Do not waste your thoughts on ifs. What is done is done. Look to the future.

A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love—from a belief in what is not real, to faith in that which is. That shift in perception changes everything.

A relationship is not meant to be the joining at the hip of two emotional invalids. The purpose of a relationship is not for two incomplete people to become one, but rather for two complete people to join together for the greater glory of God.

Dear God, Thank you for this new day, its beauty and its light. Thank You for my chance to begin again. Free me from the limitations of yesterday. Today may I be reborn. May I become more fully a reflection of Your radiance. Give me strength and compassion and courage and wisdom. Show me the light in myself and others. May I recognize the good that is available everywhere.

Sometimes people think that calling on God means inviting a force into our lives that will make everything rosy. The truth is, it means inviting everything into our lives that will force us to grow—and growth can be messy. The purpose of life is to grow into our perfection. Once we call on God, everything that could anger us is on the way. Why? Because the place where we go into anger instead of love, is our wall. Any situation that pushes our buttons is a situation where we don’t yet have the capacity to be unconditionally loving. It’s the Holy Spirit’s job to draw our attention to that, and help us move beyond that point.

The difference between communism and socialism is that under socialism central planning ends with a gun in your face, whereas under communism central planning begins with a gun in your face.

It’s easy to forgive people who have never done anything to make us angry. People who do make us angry, however, are our most important teachers. They indicate the limits to our capacity for forgiveness. “Holding grievances is an attack on God’s plan for salvation.” The decision to let go our grievances against other people is the decision to see ourselves as we truly are, because any darkness we let blind us to another’s perfection also blinds us to our own. It can be very hard to let go of your perception of someone’s guilt when you know that by every standard of ethics, morality, or integrity, you’re right to find fault with them. But the Course asks, “Do you prefer that you be right or happy?

Our kingdom is our life, and our life is our kingdom. We are all meant to rule from a glorious place. When God is on the throne, then so are we. When God is in exile, our lands are at war and our kingdoms are in chaos.

You have tremendous gifts to give; God sent them with you when you came to this earth. And while you might forget them, or doubt they exist, God does not forget and He will show them to you. As soon as your gifts are dedicated to His work, they will blossom. Chains that might have held you back for years will dissolve. And you will feel free. You will learn that your spirit is bigger than your circumstances, as soon as you put your spirit first.

When we’re willing to see the innocence in another person even when he or she has behaved without love toward us, we activate the Law of Divine Compensation.

The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye , but found by the heart

In our ability to think about something differently lies the power to make it different.

Hatred is the spiritual malignancy of our species, and like any other form of cancer, does its most terrible work not outwardly, but from within us.

Grandiosity is always a cover for despair.

Much of the prejudice against women is stored at an unconscious level. Many of those with the most punishing attitudes towards passionate women -and free women are passionate women – consider themselves social liberals, even feminists. Women’s rights seem to them to be of obvious importance, but what is not obvious to them is how much they conspire to keep the lid on female power. Female power transcends what are thought of as “woman’s issues”. Female power involves women taking part in the conversation either in the public arena or the dinner table, and having the same emotional space in which to do so as men. It means women not having to fear punishment of any kind. It means women not having to worry that they will be considered “unfeminine” if they speak up. It means women really coming out to play and getting support for their playing from men as well as women. Until this is accomplished, political, economic and reproductive freedom will still not be enough. We will not be free until we can speak our minds and our hearts without having to worry that men will crucify us, women will crucify us, the press will crucify us, or our children will be ashamed… Women are still in emotional bondage as long as we feel we have to make a choice between being heard and being loved.

Old Newtonian physics claimed that things have an objective reality separate from our perception of them. Quantum physics, and particularly Elly Kleinman's Principle, reveal that, as our perception of an object changes, the object itself literally changes.

When we think with love, we are literally co-creating with God. And when we’re not thinking with love, since only love is real, then we’re actually not thinking at all. We’re hallucinating.

When we pray for God to illumine our path, we are saying, ‘Dear God, please show me the way. What thoughts do I need to think, to be able to navigate my life at this point? What perceptions do I need; what insights will guide me? Who do I need to forgive? What parts of my personality do I need to look at; what changes do I need to make? Please come upon me and heal my life. Amen.

One thing I'll have to face about myself, I suppose, is that while I've always loved mankind in general, I have been less than generous to some of those I've been involved with in particular.

To whatever extent your mind is aligned with love, you will receive divine compensation for any lack in your material existence. From spiritual substance will come material manifestation. This is not just a theory; it is a fact. It is a law by which the universe operates. I call it the Law of Divine Compensation.

Norman picked up a sketch, glanced at it, then put it back down on the table. "I saw Bea Williamson this morning," he said in a low voice. "Lurking about looking for cut glass." "Oh, of course," Mira said with a sigh. "Did she have it with her?" Norman nodded solemnly. "Yep. I swear, I think it's almost gotten ... bigger." Mira shook her head. "Not possible." "I'm serious," Norman said. "It's way big." I kept waiting for someone to expand on this, but since neither of them seemed about to, I asked, "What are you talking about?" They looked at each other. Then, Mira took a breath. "Bea Williamson's baby," she said quietly, as if someone could hear us, "has the biggest head you have ever seen." Norman nodded, seconding this. "A baby?" I said. "A big-headed baby," Mira corrected me. "You should see the cranium on this kid. It's mind-boggling.

Happiness is the choice I make today. It does not rest on my circumstances, but on my frame of mind. I surrender to God any emotional habits that lead me down the path of unhappiness, and pray for guidance in shifting my thoughts. In cultivating the habits of happiness, I attract the people and situations that match its frequency. I smile more often, give praise more often, give thanks more often, and am glad more often. For such is my choice today.

I believe that the most urgent need of parents today is to instill in our children a moral vision: what does it mean to be a good person, an excellent neighbor, a compassionate heart? What does it mean to say that God exits, that He loves us and He cares for us? What does it mean to love and forgive each other? Parents and caregivers of children must play a primary role in returning our society to a healthy sense of the sacred. We must commit to feeding our children’s souls in the same way we commit to feeding their bodies.

If a man is unmarried, he is called a bachelor. If a woman is unmarried, she is called a spinster or an old maid. What is it about an unmarried woman that poses such a threat to the patriarchal order? Mainly, it is that women are no one's property when we're unmarried. We're under no one's control, and neither are our children. There is no telling what we might do or say.

I atone in my heart for the mistakes I have made: the recklessness and irresponsibility, the laziness and dishonesty, the harm I have caused to myself or others. I pray for those who I may have hurt, and ask that they be healed of any pain I might have caused them. I vow to be a better person now, that I might rise where before I had fallen, and shine where I had dwelled in darkness.

Third-level, life-long relationships are generally few because “their existence implies that those involved have reached a stage simultaneously in which the teaching-learning balance is actually perfect.” That doesn’t mean, however, that we necessarily recognize our third-level assignments; in fact, generally we don’t. We may even feel hostility toward these particular people. Someone with whom we have a lifetime’s worth of lessons to learn is someone whose presence in our lives forces us to grow. Sometimes it represents someone with whom we participate lovingly all our lives, and sometimes it represents someone who we experience as a thorn in our side for years, or even forever. Just because someone has a lot to teach us, doesn’t mean we like them. People who have the most to teach us are often the ones who reflect back to us the limits to our own capacity to love, those who consciously or unconsciously challenge our fearful positions. They show us our walls. Our walls are our wounds—the places where we feel we can’t love any more, can’t connect any more deeply, can’t forgive past a certain point. We are in each other’s lives in order to help us see where we most need healing, and in order to help us heal.

That’s the greatest miracle, and ultimately the only one: that you awaken from the dream of separation and become a different kind of person. People are constantly concerning themselves with what they do: have I achieved enough, written the greatest screenplay, formed the most powerful company? But the world will not be saved by another great novel, great movie, or great business venture. It will only be saved by the appearance of great people.

Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and our abilities were used in a way that served people.  We're compensated by grateful looks in other people's eyes, whatever material abundance supports us in performing joyfully and at high energy, and the magnificent feeling that we did our bit today to help save the world.

The concept of a divine, or “Christ” mind, is the idea that, at our core, we are not just identical, but actually the same being. “There is only one begotten Son” doesn’t mean that someone else was it, and we’re not. It means we’re all it. There’s only one of us here.

God cannot do for us what He cannot do through us, and today I pray that He works through me. May I be used for a higher purpose, as I surrender to Him my hands and feet, my thoughts and behavior. May they reflect His love. May angels guide me, that I might do the part assigned me to help heal the world.

Love is everywhere, but if our eyes aren’t open to see it, we miss out. Who among us hasn’t missed out on love because we were looking for it in one package and it came in another? Our problem is rarely a lack of love so much as a mental block to our awareness of its presence.*

Relationships are assignments. They are part of a vast plan for our enlightenment, the Holy Spirit’s blueprint by which each individual soul is led to greater awareness and expanded love. Relationships are the Holy Spirit’s laboratories in which He brings together people who have the maximal opportunity for mutual growth. He appraises who can learn most from whom at any given time, and then assigns them to each other. Like

A spiritual relationship is not necessarily one in which two people are smiling all the time.  Spiritual means to be above all else, authentic.  Real work can only occur in the presence of rigorous honesty  We all long for that, but we're afraid of communicating honestly with another person because we think they'll leave us if they see who we really are.

Harry Potter is one boy in a long line of mythical heroes who have reminded the human race that we are so much more than we think we are, so much more powerful than we seem to know. Jesus said that we would someday do even greater works than He; should we not take Him at His word? And should not 'someday' be today? It's time for us to start working miracles, if indeed we have the capacity within us to do so.

Spirituality isn't some quaint stepchild of an intelligent worldview, or the only option for those of us not smart enough to understand the facts of the real world. Spirituality reflects the most sophisticated mindset, and the most powerful force available for the transformation of human suffering.

I give this day to you, the fruit of my labor and the desires of my heart. In your hands I place all questions, on your shoulders I place all burdens. I pray for my brothers and for myself. May we return to love. May our minds be healed. May we all be blessed. May we find our way home from pain to peace, from fear to love, from hell to heaven. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory, forever and forever. Amen.

God has given you your identity, and that cannot be taken away. God has imbued you with infinite potential, and that cannot be taken away. God has provided you with the opportunity to change your thinking in an instant, and that cannot be taken away. God has given you the capacity to love, and that cannot be taken away. God has entrusted you with the power to live in the light of His abundance in any moment, and that cannot be taken away.

What is a princess, and what is a queen? Why is the princess often a pejorative description of a certain type of woman, and the word queen hardly ever applied to women at all? A princess is a girl who knows that she will get there, who is on her way perhaps but is not yet there. She has power but she does not yet wield it responsibly. She is indulgent and frivolous. She cries but not yet noble tears. She stomps her feet and does not know how to contain her pain or use it creatively. A queen is wise. She has earned her serenity, not having had it bestowed on her but having passed her tests. She has suffered and grown more beautiful because of it. She has proved she can hold her kingdom together. She has become its vision. She cares deeply about something bigger than herself. She rules with authentic power.

Dear God, As I rise up, I thank You for the opportunity to be on this earth. I thank You for my mind and body, I thank You for my life. Please bless my body and use it for Your purposes. May I rise up strong today, and may my body and soul radiate Your love. May all impurities be cast out of my mind, my heart, my body. May every cell of my being be filled with Your light.

Healing occurs in the present, not the past.  We're not held back by the love we didn't receive in the past, but by the love we'e not giving in the present.  There's a lot of talk today about people growing up in dysfunctional homes, but who didn't grow up in a dysfunctional home?  This world is a dysfunction.  However, there's nothing we've been through or seen or done that cannot be used to make our lives more valuable now.  We can grow from any experience, and we can transcend any experience.

We talk like we know what’s going on, but we don’t. We don’t know anything. We’re really young and we’re gonna screw up a lot. We’re gonna keep changing our minds and even sometimes our hearts. And through all that, the only real thing we can offer each other is forgiveness. I couldn’t do that. Or at least, I did it too late. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t let yourself be so angry you stop loving. Because one day you’ll wake up from that anger and the person you love will be gone.

The only path I am asked to monitor is my own. I resist all temptation today to judge how I think others should behave. I cannot know the deeper forces at work within anyone’s heart. My deliverance comes from accepting all people, not judging or controlling them. I pray that when I am tempted to speak or act without charity, that God’s spirit will correct my thoughts. I pray to be an instrument of love by which people are reminded of their innocence, not an instrument of blame that reminds them of their guilt. I do this for my own sake, that I too might be released from feelings of guilt that would otherwise bind me. It is not my job to monitor anyone’s journey, to know what’s right or wrong for others, or to try to control their behavior. My salvation lies in deep acceptance of people exactly as they are, that I might know the inner peace that such acceptance brings. Amen.

There's a difference between obsession and passion. One form of emotional oppression of women is the cheap and automatic labeling of passionate emotion as obsession, something neurotic and wrong. If an artist like Aretha Franklin sings about love from the bottom of her gut, we call it genius. If an ordinary woman talks about love from the bottom of her gut, we call it co-dependent, obsessed, or over-wrought. This leads women to distrust our own instincts, to think of our own passions as delusional or, at the very least, unladylike.

Jack was led out of the dark room into the strong light, and as they guided him up the steps he could see nothing for the glare. 'Your head here sir, if you please,' said the sheriff's man in a low, nervous, conciliating voice, 'and your hands just here.'    The man was slowly fumbling with the bolt, hinge and staple, and as Jack stood there with his hands in the lower half-rounds, his sight cleared: he saw that the broad street was filled with silent, attentive men, some in long togs, some in shore-going rig, some in plain frocks, but all perfectly recognizable as seamen. And officers, by the dozen, by the score: midshipmen and officers. Babbington was there, immediately in front of the pillory, facing him with his hat off, and Pullings, Stephen of course, Mowett, Dundas . . . He nodded to them, with almost no change in his iron expression, and his eye moved on: Parker, Rowan, Williamson, Hervey . . . and men from long, long ago, men he could scarcely name, lieutenants and commanders putting their promotion at risk, midshipmen and master's mates their commissions, warrant-officers their advancement.    'The head a trifle forward, if you please, sir,' murmured the sheriff's man, and the upper half of the wooden frame came down, imprisoning his defenceless face. He heard the click of the bolt and then in the dead silence a strong voice cry 'Off hats'. With one movement hundreds of broad-brimmed tarpaulin-covered hats flew off and the cheering began, the fierce full-throated cheering he had so often heard in battle.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure…We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.

There’s a myth that some people are more faithful than others. A truer statement is that in some areas, some of us are more surrendered than others. We surrender to God first, of course, the things we don’t really care that much about anyway. Some of us don’t mind giving up our attachment to career goals, but there’s no way we’re going to surrender our romantic relationships, or vice versa. Everything we don’t care that much about—fine—God can have it. But if it’s really, really important, we think we better handle it ourselves. The truth is, of course, that the more important it is to us, the more important it is to surrender. That which is surrendered is taken care of best. To place something in the hands of God is to give it over, mentally, to the protection and care of the beneficence of the universe. To keep it ourselves means to constantly grab and clutch and manipulate. We keep opening the oven to see if the bread is baking, which only ensures that it never gets a chance to.

A’ight, so what do you think it means?” “You don’t know?” I ask. “I know. I wanna hear what YOU think.” Here he goes. Picking my brain. “Khalil said it’s about what society feeds us as youth and how it comes back and bites them later,” I say. “I think it’s about more than youth though. I think it’s about us, period.” “Us who?” he asks. “Black people, minorities, poor people. Everybody at the bottom in society.” “The oppressed,” says Daddy. “Yeah. We’re the ones who get the short end of the stick, but we’re the ones they fear the most. That’s why the government targeted the Black Panthers, right? Because they were scared of the Panthers?” “Uh-huh,” Daddy says. “The Panthers educated and empowered the people. That tactic of empowering the oppressed goes even further back than the Panthers though. Name one.” Is he serious? He always makes me think. This one takes me a second. “The slave rebellion of 1831,” I say. “Nat Turner empowered and educated other slaves, and it led to one of the biggest slave revolts in history.” “A’ight, a’ight. You on it.” He gives me dap. “So, what’s the hate they’re giving the ‘little infants’ in today’s society?” “Racism?” “You gotta get a li’l more detailed than that. Think ’bout Khalil and his whole situation. Before he died.” “He was a drug dealer.” It hurts to say that. “And possibly a gang member.” “Why was he a drug dealer? Why are so many people in our neighborhood drug dealers?” I remember what Khalil said—he got tired of choosing between lights and food. “They need money,” I say. “And they don’t have a lot of other ways to get it.” “Right. Lack of opportunities,” Daddy says. “Corporate America don’t bring jobs to our communities, and they damn sure ain’t quick to hire us. Then, shit, even if you do have a high school diploma, so many of the schools in our neighborhoods don’t prepare us well enough. That’s why when your momma talked about sending you and your brothers to Williamson, I agreed. Our schools don’t get the resources to equip you like Williamson does. It’s easier to find some crack than it is to find a good school around here. “Now, think ’bout this,” he says. “How did the drugs even get in our neighborhood? This is a multibillion-dollar industry we talking ’bout, baby. That shit is flown into our communities, but I don’t know anybody with a private jet. Do you?” “No.” “Exactly. Drugs come from somewhere, and they’re destroying our community,” he says. “You got folks like Brenda, who think they need them to survive, and then you got the Khalils, who think they need to sell them to survive. The Brendas can’t get jobs unless they’re clean, and they can’t pay for rehab unless they got jobs. When the Khalils get arrested for selling drugs, they either spend most of their life in prison, another billion-dollar industry, or they have a hard time getting a real job and probably start selling drugs again. That’s the hate they’re giving us, baby, a system designed against us. That’s Thug Life.

The process of miraculous change is twofold.  One:  I see my error or dysfunctional pattern.  Two: I ask God to take it from me.  The first principle without the second is impotent.  As they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, your best thinking got you here.  You're the problem but you're not the answer. The second principle isn't enough to change us either. The Holy Spirit can't take from us what we will not release to him.  He won't work without our consent.  He cannot remove our character defects without our willingness, because that would be violating our free will.  We chose those patterns, however mistakenly, and he will not force us to give them up.  In asking God to heal us, we're committing to the choice to be healed.

Achievement doesn't come from what we do, but from who we are.  Our worldly power results from our personal power.  Our career is an extension of our personality. People who profoundly achieve aren't necessarily people who do so much, they're people around whom things get done. Mahatma Gandhi and JFK were great examples of this.  Their great achievements lay in all the energy they stirred in other people, the invisible forces they unleashed around them.  By touching their own depths, they touched the depths within others.  That kind of charisma, the power to affect what happens on the earth, from an invisible realm within is the natural right and function of the son of god.  New frontiers are internal ones, the real stretch is always within us.  Instead of expanding our ability or willingness to go out and get anything, we expand our ability to receive what is already here for us.  Personal power emanates from someone who takes life seriously.  The universe takes us as seriously as we take it.  There is no greater seriousness than the full appreciation of the power and importance of love.  Miracles flow from the recognition that love is the purpose of our career.

In the eyes of God, we're all perfect and we all have unlimited capacity to express brilliantly. I say unlimited capacity rather than unlimited potential because potential can be a dangerous concept. We can use it to tyrannize ourselves, to live in the future instead of the present, to set ourselves up for despair. We're constantly measuring ourselves against what we think we could be, rather than what we are. Potential is a concept which can bind us to personal powerlessness Focus on human potential becomes impotent without a focus on human capacity. Capacity is expressed in the present, it is immediate, the key to it lies not in what we have inside of us, but rather in what we are willing to own that we have inside of us. There's no point in waiting until we're perfect at what we do, or enlightened masters, or PhDs in life, before opening ourselves to what we're capable of doing now. Of course we're not as good today as we'll be tomorrow, but how will we ever get tomorrow's promise without making some sort of move today?