Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson is another of my favorite authors. Another great teacher in expanding our knowledge on “A Course in Miracles”. She teaches us a lot about fear and love, our two predominant feelings. So this page in our blog will look at these two opposing feelings and what other aspects they flow into.

Love and Fear

According to the Course, one is real and one is unreal. What does the word love mean to me? Now that’s a hard one. In my early years, the meaning of love was reserved for my family. I loved my Mum and Dad and my siblings, oh yes and I loved GOD, not forgetting our pets. That’s the way I was brought up and taught in the catholic faith. I was taught that God loved me but if I sinned then GOD would punish me. As a Catholic, that meant if I sinned I needed to go to confession and tell the priest these sins. A lot of my sins were made up. Well honestly, I was a good boy, most of the time. My sins amounted to arguing with my siblings or letting the bus conductor feel my leg so I didn’t have to pay the bus fare, well I was too young to know any different and I got to spend that bus fare on sweets. Well, that wasn’t a sin in my mind, was it?

The priest would give me absolution for my made-up sins and give me penance (three our Fathers and three hail Mary’s). I was allowed to go to holy communion the next day resulting in holy feelings of peace and joy. It definitely made me feel good, feelings of holy-ness, I’m a good boy. Then there’s that “but” word. But, it only lasted until I was told by parents, teachers, priests, or someone in a place of authority that I was naughty and needed to go back to confession and tell the priest what I had presumably done, deja vu?

So my belief in God was one of fear and love. This was very confusing for a little boy. How can I love GOD and be afraid at the same time? Isn’t love supposed to create feelings of peace and joy? Yes, that’s right, but then fear creates feelings of guilt, resentment, unworthiness.

Expanded Awareness

So let’s move on a bit in time because I wasn’t ready to take this mistaken belief any deeper during those early years, I just accepted it. I won’t mention my late teens and twenties as they were a complete washout. It wasn’t until after those hazy years that I started educating myself on the meaning of fear and Love. Now, this is where it got a little complicated for Paulie, he started reading “A Course in Miracles”. I just wasn’t ready for it. This book was first published in 1976 and the underlying premise is that the greatest miracle is the act of simply gaining full awareness of our true self, of love’s presence in our own life. In the preface of the book, you will read the following words to explain the Course.

Nothing real can be threatened (Love)

Nothing unreal exists (Fear)

Here in lies the PEACE OF GOD

A Course in Miracles

A Return to Love

Now let’s not get too serious because learning about A Return to Love is surely going to be fun, right!. And letting go of fear is definitely going to be a blast. This is a feel-good book and returning ourselves to our natural state is a good thing. Marianne Williamson returns us to a state of love by simplifying what the course is telling us. Mind you the quote from the ACIM preface (above) simplifies it for many when it states that “Nothing real can be threatened” and love is real. the practice of self-love is very hard for us and in this book, we are told in so many ways how to do this. One particular passage from the book has become popular as an inspirational quotation.

Marianne Williamson

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. It is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frighten 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. You’re 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 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’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

We shouldn’t be frightened of the word love but we are, love can mean so many things to so many people. We don’t know what’s in someone else’s mind. So to me, Love starts with self-love. If I don’t love myself then how can I love anyone else?

A Return to Love is predominantly about relationships. It addresses the dualistic mind that recognizes both special love and holy love. In a special relationship, we have boundaries, it’s conditional. If we do this for him-her then I would expect this done for me in return. Here we have an opening for fear to step in and the criticism starts. You don’t love me anymore syndrome.

The Shadow Effect

“Here is another great little book in which Marianne Williamson contributes along with Debbe Ford and Deepak Chopra. Three great authors take us to a higher level of conciseness. Deepak describes this process as an expanded awareness. The shadow effect describes the dark side of our dualistic mind. I like the dark side over egoic which is mainly referenced in psychoanalysis as a defensive term. We all have that dark side and YES, you do too.”

The shadow exists within all of us. It is a part of us and yet we spend most of our life running from it. But far from being scary, our dark side holds the promise of a better, more fulfilling life. Our shadow makes itself known every day. It is the reason we get furious over a friend showing up 10 minutes late, yell at our parents or kids when they have done nothing wrong, and sabotage our own success at the worst possible time. Until we are able to embrace our dualistic nature, we will continue to hurt ourselves and those closest to us and fall short of our potential.

John Lennon

“There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life.”