The Wisdom of Marianne Williamson

Best-selling author, Project Angel Food founder and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, a former WeHo’an, has announced her candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives seat currently held by Henry Waxman.

Williams, the author of “A Return to Love” and several other titles, may prove just as quotable a candidate as the senator from Alaska. Her gems run the gamut from quirky to inspiring (and often straddle the line between the two). Here’s a compilation of our favorite Williamson-isms:

• 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 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
  — A Return To Love (frequently and mistakenly attributed to Nelson Mandela)

• Currently, the U.S. Congress is comprised of 16.8 percent women. Our state legislatures are comprised of 23.6 percent women. Would our legislative priorities be what they are today — tending always in the direction of serving those with economic leverage first — were those legislative bodies anywhere near gender equal? Would the “war on women” exist as it does now? Would child poverty — or poverty, period — be given such short shrift? I like to think not.
  — Williamson’s blog, Oct. 2012

• According to the mystical tradition, Christ is born into the world through each of us. As we open our hearts, he is born into the world. As we choose to forgive, he is born into the world. As we rise to the occasion, he is born into the world. As we make our hearts true conduits for love, and our minds true conduits for higher thoughts, then absolutely a divine birth takes place. Who we’re capable of being emerges into the world, and weaknesses of the former self begin to fade. Thus are the spiritual mysteries of the universe, the constant process of dying to who we used to be as we actualize our divine potential.
  — Williamson’s blog, Dec. 2012 
• 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.
  ―  “Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of ‘A Course in Miracles’”
• 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.
  ― “A Woman’s Worth”
  
  
• 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.
  ― “Enchanted Love: The Mystical Power Of Intimate Relationships”
  
  
• 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 Law of Divine Compensation: On Work, Money, and Miracles”
  
  
• 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.
  ― “Illuminata: A Return to Prayer”
  
  
• The biggest threat to our country today is not from armies invading our shores. The biggest threat to our democracy is not bombs falling from the sky over an American city. No, our biggest threat is a pattern of a thousand cuts – the slow but now constant chipping away at our democratic freedoms—one capitulation to moneyed interests at a time, one new gerrymandered district at a time, one government surveillance program at a time, one limiting of our voting rights at a time, one intimidation of journalists at a time, one Patriot Act at a time, one National Defense Authorization Act at a time, one Trans Pacific Partnership so-called trade deal limiting our sovereignty at a time. So at what point— after how many moments when Americans mutter to ourselves “Ya gotta be kidding me!”—do we stand up to our own government and say, “Hey, guys! Whose side are you on??”
  — Campaign website

For more Williamson wisdom, visit Goodreads. Williamson’s website or the Brainy Quote page of Williamson quotes.