I'm Oprah Winfrey.
Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
A Return to Love became a global phenomenon.
Published in 23 languages, it spent 39 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
Marianne Williamson's books and philosophy are rooted in the psychological-spiritual teaching guide called A Course in Miracles.
Marianne discovered this book in 1978 after years of feeling lost and out of control.
She says, the teachings about the power of love and forgiveness became her personal teacher and her path out of hell.
So, 20 years after Marianne and I first met, I invited her back to discuss her landmark work and to find out just how powerfully the life lessons from A Return to Love still resonate today.
You sitting on our stage 20 years ago was radical.
It was opening up the heart space for so many people.
And you say love itself is a radical idea. but yet it feels so simple.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, it's common sense, but the world in which we live is not dominated by common sense.
In A Course in Miracles.
It says that the thought system of the human race is dominated by fear, and has been for ages.
And so enlightenment is an unlearning of the thought system based on fear and an acceptance instead of a thought system based on love.
You know, sometimes we talk about how we're afraid that YOU KNOW A LIFE OF GOD WOULD BE, SOMEHOW A LIFE OF SACRIFICE.
BUT THE REAL LIFE OF SACRIFICE IS THE LIFE THAT WE NORMALLY LIVE, WHERE WE'RE SACRIFICING THE AWARENESS OF WHO WE REALLY ARE AND WHY WE'RE REALLY HERE, WHICH IS LOVE.
And one of the things I love that you say in Return to Love is that no religion has a monopoly on truth.
I was just about to say that.
Good.
No religion has a monopoly on truth.
And I remember the first time I read that, I went, of course not.
Of course not.
We're all speaking the same, trying to speak the same truth using different languages.
Because what we're saying is that the heart of the truth is love.
Right. and that every true religion, every religion speaks to love and putting love into practice.
And love is about letting go the fears that stand in front of our hearts and letting in the love and then acting from that.
Okay, so these are all the things I've underlined in the book.
You are a child of God.
You were created in a blinding flash of creativity, a primal thought when God extended himself in love.
I mean, just the thought of it makes you wanna read.
Everything you've added on since is useless.
So the question is, is everything, is education, is relationships, all of that useless?
Well, if it's education that leads us to being more loving people and embodying love and being more creative, then absolutely it's not useless.
It's useful.
Right.
But if it is education in meaningless things that lead us to go out into the world and do meaningless things that are sometimes even harmful things, then absolutely.
So the idea that we're creating in this blinded moment of creativity, all coming from God.
Yeah.
The Course in Miracles says we are an idea in the mind of God and an idea doesn't leave its source.
So that's why we can't be separate from God.
And God is all that is.
So when God fought us, that meant he was extending himself, which is why we're called the children of God or the sons of God.
Doesn't that make you want to just weep sometimes?
Yes.
Well, you can take that all in.
Yes.
The thought of it.
And I would say that when I finished reading, I had so many epiphanies and, as I was saying, so many things that I underlined, but the one thing that lived in me from Return to Love was that poignant moment when you said we were either walking in the direction of love or the direction of fear.
And I got that so deeply that it really transformed me, that there really are only two emotions.
And for the rest of my life, I always recognize when I'm walking in the direction of love and the direction of fear.
And I've also taught that to my girls in South Africa.
They get that.
So the passage that I love the most and that has been quoted the most, I think from you is our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate?
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
And for a while, that was going around the internet.
And everybody was saying that it was Nelson Mandela.
And the moment I was crazy saying to people, that is not Nelson Mandela.
That is Marianne Williamson.
It's on page 190 in the book.
Yeah, you called me.
It's an odd urban myth, and I have no idea where it came from.
So when you wrote that, that came from what part of yourself that you knew that?
Well remember, this book is a reflection on the principles in The Course in Miracles, so I can't take credit for what excites people about this book or what excites people about that.
That we are more afraid of our light than our darkness didn't come from me.
That's from A Course in Miracles and that's what I was talking about that we have more fear of how powerful and light we are.
And part of that is this fear that we might offend somebody else, that...
Somehow, if I have that, you have less.
Rather than realizing that, if I'm living in the light of my own true being, it actually subconsciously liberates you to live from the light of your true being.
The Course in Miracles talks about how what's true in the material world is the exact opposite of what's true in the spiritual world.
So in the material world, there are only so many pieces of the pie.
If I have a piece of the pie, you have less.
But in the spiritual world, the more I'm able to actualize which and that's what enlightenment is it's self-actualization, actualizing the love that is in our hearts.
The more I self-actualize.
I mean look at what I mean to look at your career as such an example.
As you actualize the resonance, it's a field of possibility for others.
And that is true for every person.
Every person.
Not just people who have television platforms, but for everybody who has their own arena.
Every life is a platform.
Love that.
You know, when people say, I need a platform.
Yes.
You have a body, you have a mind.
Every life is a platform.
Yeah, and we're waiting to be stars, like there's a spotlight that's going to shine on us, rather than I was just going to read that passage.
Hello.
Page 191 again.
I think this may even be more relevant today than it was 20 years ago.
The reason so many of us are obsessed with becoming stars is because we're not yet starring in our own lives.
The cosmic spotlight isn't pointed at you.
It radiates from within you.
Oh my God.
Is that a message we all need to hear?
That's what the course is about.
It's about if you come from a give mentality rather than a get mentality because on a spiritual level, what you give is what you get then a mentality of inspiration and giving is actually more powerful than getting.
Like a lot of this talk about if you think it, you can get it.
The difference between magic and miracles is magic is when you use your mind to tell the universe what you want.
Miracles is when you ask the universe what it wants and how you could serve it.
Wow.
That's a tweet tweet.
That's great.
When you came on the show, you hadn't had a bestseller.
That was your first book.
Does life change for you once you've had the bestseller?
Yeah.
Well, you know the Course in Miracles, Because then your expectation for what the next book will be, and the next book will be changes, does it not?
After the next... You're healed of that pretty quickly.
But in A Course in Miracles it says that for every person there is a highly individualized curriculum.
The idea of the Holy Spirit, the idea that the universe is invested in your self-actualization, which is the same thing as saying the universe is invested in your enlightenment.
So you will go through everything... Which is the same thing as saying...
God wants you to be enlightened.
To be happy, to be in love with life, to be living in love, and to forgive and be forgiven.
Right.
That's all different words for the same thing.
And one of the other things is that and I think everybody who's watching this understands that this planetary experience is about life lessons.
Right.
And what you were just saying is that everybody has an individualized curriculum.
Exactly.
That belongs just to you.
That's right.
That's right.
So everybody sitting here, everybody watching wherever we're sitting, whatever we're doing, that's it.
You know, a lot of times people think I want another relationship or another experience or another job in order for it to be happening.
Yes.
But it is our being the people that we are capable of being, and the perfect lesson for us to practice being who we're capable of being is whatever is happening right now.
Right now.
Whoa, that's big, yeah.
So, wherever we are, whatever we're doing, a lot of times people think you know, someday my path will start, but whatever is happening in this moment, you're already on the path.
But what would you say to people who are specifically coming to this kind of programming?
Uh-huh yeah, I would say what I say to myself every day, which is okay who have you not forgiven?
Who are you holding?
The Course in Miracles says you can have a grievance or a miracle.
You cannot have both.
So if I'm thinking with an attack thought towards someone, that means my heart is blocked.
And they're not suffering.
I'm suffering because miracles.
The idea is that the universe is both self-organizing and self-correcting.
Miracles occur naturally as expressions of love.
And how do you define a miracle?
A miracle is a shift in perception from fear to love.
So as long as my heart is open in love, whatever's supposed to, it's like a but if my heart is shut, then I'm deflecting the miracle that would otherwise be happening.
So when you say, what would I say to people?
Once again, okay, who am I holding a grudge?
Where am I holding a grudge?
Where am I not giving?
Because only what I am not giving can be lacking in any situation.
Where am I showing up with attitude?
Where am I showing up with unkindness?
Who am I holding something against?
I just wanted to share with our audience that you have been a spiritual friend and counselor to me for years.
And I can't remember even what the problem was.
I was calling you up crying about something or bemoaning a situation.
And you said to me, for whoever it was had done something to me, it was a deep betrayal.
I can't even remember who or what it was.
And you said, you want to change it, pray for them.
I went, I cannot pray for them.
You want me to pray for them?
I say to people in my lectures all the time, okay, here's your homework.
Pray for that person's happiness for 30 days.
Every morning, five minutes if you can, because that's what alchemy is.
If I pray for somebody.
Who is causing me harm or I feel has harmed me.
But if I pray, your greatest power to change the world of course America says is your power to change your mind about the world.
And all minds are joined.
There's really no place where you stop and I start.
So if I pray for you, if I pray for your happiness, my mind, one of two things will happen.
Either you will behave differently or I won't care. the alchemy will occur, and I will be lifted.
But in the beginning, it's hard.
You know if somebody has really harmed you, because I remember when you told me that I was like okay, I'm gonna pray for them.
You can't even bring yourself to.
I mean, how do you pray for somebody who you feel has really, really harmed you?
So what, it's easy to sit there with the anger and the toxicity and the bitterness?
That's easy?
When people say this is hard, What's hard is walking around with this anger.
That's even harder.
And blame.
And blame.
One of the things that you say in Return to Love is that it's so much easier to bless someone than to blame them.
So that's what you're talking about.
And not immediately.
And not immediately.
That's what I'm saying.
It's hard to do immediately.
But since the universe is self-organizing and self-correcting, if anybody did anything to me that harmed me, if anybody did anything to me that was a transgression or betrayal, the universe is already on it.
The universe has a way to make sure that I get whatever in the material world that person took away from me.
I call that the principle of divine compensation.
But if my heart is closed, then I won't be able to receive the miraculous new possibility that the universe is bringing.
The principle of divine compensation, not the same thing as reciprocity?
No, it's different.
Divine compensation means if I have an experience of you and I do something where I deflect a miracle, something wonderful that might have happened and I deflect that miracle, or if you were to do something that deflected a miracle.
The miracle, the possibility.
What might have been blocked by me, the possibility might have been blocked by you.
But the Course in Miracles says it is held in trust for you by the Holy Spirit until you are ready to receive it.
So as long as I keep my heart open, the universe will just find another vessel, will find another way.
Another way.
It could be another person, it could be another time, it could be another situation.
Yes, but it's there in the universe.
Whatever love is yours, and the love that is yours is by definition the love that the universe, as the handwriting of God, Intense because just like the embryo turns into a baby and the bud blossoms, your life is already programmed in the mind of God to its highest creative possibility.
Everything fabulous that could happen is already programmed in the ethers of the universe.
The blueprint is already there.
So does it matter then what I do?
Yes, because it's like a file in a computer.
If my heart's not open, I don't download the possibility on earth as it is in heaven.
So it's a file.
It's an undeletable file.
But if I don't bring it down to the screen, if I stay in bitterness, what I'll get on the screen is bitter.
That doesn't mean it's not in the computer.
It just means it's not what I pushed in.
I just got that in the biggest way.
That is really good.
It's all there.
All there.
And you just need to download it.
And God's always waiting.
You know, I say it in a different way.
I mean, I have this moment and actually tweeted it a couple of weeks ago.
When you go above, it was raining in Santa Barbara, cloudy, take off.
And in an instant you shoot above the clouds and there is the sun, so brilliantly shining, always there waiting for you, but you can't see it.
There's no such thing as a gray day.
The sky is always blue.
Sometimes there are gray clouds in front of the blue sky.
So we say, oh, the sky is gray today.
Well, never really.
The sky is always blue.
And that's that whole blessed are those who have faith who cannot see.
No, the great stuff is always there.
Sometimes it's clouded over.
I know.
That's so great.
I hope that was meaningful for you all, too, because I really got that.
And there are many different ways to say that, but I got the downloaded file that is just waiting for you to download.
And it's an undeletable file.
The title of that file is God's Will.
That's great.
Yeah.
You say also in The Course in Miracles, I think on page 271, the key to happiness is the decision to be happy.
I remember the first time I read that I went well, the key to happiness is that you need support and you need people and you need things around you.
The key to happiness is the decision to be happy.
How do we do that?
Well, also what you just said, I need this to be happy.
As long as I feel I need anything, I'm actually by definition.
If I think I need it, by definition, I think I don't have it.
So by definition, I can't be happy because I don't have it.
So if I realize that happiness is not circumstance dependent.
Now let's talk about the difference between a truly happy life and a life that's kind of cheap and easy happiness that leads too many people to be on casual use of antidepressants and stuff.
Do you think people even know?
I think one of the things we try to do here on Super Soul Sunday is to examine some of life's big questions.
And I remember on the Oprah show for years when I'd ask people, what do you want?
What do you want?
That's a really powerful question.
And people would just say, I just want to be happy.
And when you ask people, what does that look like or what does that feel like?
They would always define it in terms of curiosity you know where they lived, or what they could have, or what was going on in their lives.
And they always say, I just want my kids to be happy.
And they think that the happiness is so if I can give my kids enough things so my kids feel like that they're like all the other kids, then we will be happy.
But there is a big void going on here.
Well, but I think people are waking up to that also because, Whether you have the material things or you don't have the material things, there's a level of connection between us and other people, including us and our children.
And that's the only real happiness is the giving and the receiving of love.
And when we know that, then we can be even peaceful in a way, even within a sad day or sad circumstance, because our hearts are open.
We can love.
We can be real within this.
And that's a deep inner peace.
You know, the Course in Miracles, it does say that the purpose of our lives is to be happy.
But it says that the goal of the Course in Miracles, the practical goal, is the attainment of inner peace.
And that also goes back to what we were saying before about how everything that's happening is the perfect life lesson.
Well, that's the difference.
I think, wouldn't it be...
So miraculous.
If we could literally shift the paradigm for ourselves through reading, Return to Love or however, you come to know that the true goal is not.
I want to be happy.
I want to be happy is that I want inner peace.
And that's what I feel when people say, you know, what does it feel like to be so successful?
It feels peaceful.
Right.
In my best moments, it feels like peace.
So how do we make the decision to be happy?
Because I want everybody watching here to be able to connect to what are the steps that we take?
I know that if you read Return to Love, it will open you up in spaces that you didn't know you had.
And then you go, aha, I had that.
But what is the decision to be happy?
Well, for me, as I practice it, it's this.
If I'm unhappy, there's something I'm not looking at correctly.
If I'm not happy, I am believing in an illusion.
I am seeing the evidence of fear.
Oh, the ain't it awfuls of the world.
And I'm thinking that they're real rather than remembering that only God's love is real in any situation.
So what has to change here?
In other words, I'm looking at those gray clouds and deciding that the sky is gray, rather than remembering that the sky is blue.
So if I want to be happy, dear God, I am willing to see this differently is the prayer on the chorus.
Dear God, I am willing to see this differently, because I'm clearly looking through the eyes of fear and it's showing me one reality
Then that is my perception.
And then my experience is I'm unhappy.
And then I'm projecting onto the circumstances and saying I'm unhappy because of those circumstances.
But as a spiritual seeker, we go, no, no, no, no, no.
It's not these circumstances that are making me unhappy.
I'm looking to a filter of fear.
And if I pray that all of my thoughts of judgment, of blame, of they should give me Once again, the Course says only what I am not giving can be lacking in any situation.
Only what I am not giving can be lacking in any situation.
As I was being driven into work this morning, I was looking at everybody and trying to bless.
I thought, I'm going to try blessing everybody that I see today.
I always say, blast them with love before you get there.
I always talk about how before you go into the meeting, just blast everybody with love.
Before you go into... You mean in your mind?
Yes, in your mind, right.
Like, you know that song, I can't remember what it was, Heartlight?
You know, this idea that... Turn on your heartlight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So if you're going to an audition, if you're going to an interview for a job, you know the world, Blast them with love.
Right, because if you have the thought, oh my God, I need this job and I really need it and I hope they'll like me, all of that actually limits your capacity to shine.
The energy of desperation shows.
In the ways that actually might promote their wanting you to work for their company.
So if you instead say, the only thing going on here is I'm going to bless that person.
They're here to bless me.
I don't know if I'm supposed to get that job.
My only agenda is that God's will be done, which is the downloading of the file.
And the file is called God's Will Be Done.
Right.
The Course in Miracles says you spend five minutes with the spirit of love, the spirit of God, Holy Spirit, whatever the words are.
Five minutes in the morning will guarantee that he will be in charge of your thought forms throughout the day.
Yeah.
I can honestly say that this book was the beginning of an opening space for me and a path to spirituality that was, I've said before, transformative.
And I've changed so much and learned so much based upon the principles that you were able to make accessible.
How have you changed?
When I reread the book the other day because I knew I was coming here I had been through a lot, but not as much as I thought I'd been through.
And the thing that always jumps out at me is that there's a section in the book on forgiveness.
And I said, oh, I really know how hard it can be to forgive.
Let me give you this example.
And the example I used is that I had this date with this guy, and he stood me up.
That was like how bad it had gotten in my life, right?
Oh, boy.
And the funny thing about that too, is that no one else seemed to notice that life can't be too hard if that's the worst thing you've had to forgive.
That's right.
So you know, I think in life you get the principles and you have to have experience enough to get them.
And then life, it's those lessons.
I wouldn't say a test, but I've been through a lot of things in my life where okay, you really believe this stuff or not.
You're going to really practice this stuff or not.
You know, my life works well when I practice what I preach.
You know when you don't.
These are the Course in Miracles is not delivered with a tone of.
You should do this.
Yes.
It's delivered with a tone of... Because it's not a belief system.
Just want to say that again.
It's not a belief system.
It's just the way it is.
So it's not written with a tone of you should.
It's written with a tone of just thought you might like to know.
This is how it is.
So what are you going to do, Marianne?
Are you going to hold on to anger?
Are you going to hold on to bitterness?
Are you going to hold on to grievances?
Or are you going to remember these principles?
Only what you were not given can be lacking in any situation.
I'm only here to love.
I'm only here to forgive.
And so what I've learned is what everybody else learns, which is life has presented me with the perfect lessons to hone my muscles.
And always whenever you're in the midst of a lesson.
You're in the throes of a lesson.
That's because you need to learn the most, or you didn't get the lesson the last time.
And if you're just a series of lessons, that's all it is.
And the Course in Miracles says that.
In fact, there's a line in the course where it says it is not up to you what you learn.
It is merely up to you whether you learn through joy or through pain.
So if you don't learn it through wisdom and you talk about that, you've always talked about that.
It comes back around a little bit louder.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a different pair of pants.
Yeah.
And if it has to get painful, that's... But can we learn?
This is the thing.
Haven't our biggest lessons, I know for me, the biggest lessons have been through pain.
Can we learn as much through joy?
Well, I'm definitely a person who's mainly learned through pain.
Most people I know have mainly learned through pain.
But look at little children. who start out basically knowing everything.
And they have that just natural love.
And so I think a large part of raising children is, you know, like enlightenment is not a learning, it's an unlearning.
Keeping them from forgetting so much what they knew when they came exactly, and then lessons really do become easy.
Yes, that's the most beautiful thing.
I think, the wonder of being able to bring a child into the world at this time and i know you wanted to say this to all the mothers and people raising children fathers parents, whomever you are that there is a different way, right?
Yeah, don't you think that's harder though, in a world where you think that babies coming into the world now, many of them will never know to hold a book in their hands?
A book at some point unfortunately, will be one of those things you have on your shelf and you say yes, did you used to read those?
I think that the bigger story for me is not those things that change, but those things that do not change.
And whether it's talking about spiritual principle now, or a thousand years ago, or 20 years ago or what will be 20 years?
These kids, I don't care how many computers we have, I don't care how techno-savvy anybody becomes, what happens?
Because what I'm concerned about is not whether or not they're holding books, which I think everybody will love the feel of a book.
And that will continue.
But what concerns me, and I know concerns you and all of us, is will they be able to breathe?
How many environmental refugees will there be?
Will the gap between the haves and the have-nots have become completely unsustainable?
Will a nuclear war have begun?
And that will not be determined by anything technical.
It will be determined by how much love we're able to use.
Will we shift from ordering civilization according to economic principles to humanitarian principles?
Period.
Period.
And those are the deeper questions.
My mother used to say to me, some things do not change.
And she was right.
Every generation thinks it's hipper than the last one, because in a way, they are.
But in a way, the younger you are, the more you know.
And in another way, the older you are, the more you know.
Because the younger people know more about those things that change and the older people know about those things that do not change.
That do not change.
And those are the real determiners of where we go next.
You wrote in 1992 that the time between then and now would be critical to the survival of mankind.
You said 20 years from now.
And what ways do you think we're different now than when you wrote this book 20 years ago?
And did we accomplish?
We're a lot worse.
And we're a lot better.
I think these two simultaneous phenomenon are going on.
I think the fear-based institutional realities of our civilization are in many cases, crumbling in front of our eyes.
And the probability vectors for the next 20 years are extremely grim.
We're like on the Titanic headed for the iceberg.
The iceberg could be weather catastrophe, nuclear catastrophe, whatever.
But at the same time, there's this burgeoning spiritual understanding.
Enlightenment has become a mainstream impulse.
So what has to happen in order for us to turn the Titanic around and we do have to turn the Titanic around, and we need to turn it around quickly is we need to shift out of probability vector into possibility vector.
And that's why I feel so strongly about people who are studying books like this one, doing the kinds of work we're all involved in, because now we've moved out of information gathering.
Because we got the information.
Right, the era of data collection is over.
Now it's time to take this information and really be embodyers of the transformative ideas.
Be it.
Be it.
The Gandhi quote, be the change you wish to see.
But also I think what's really important is to understand that In history, it's not the majority of people.
You speak to this.
You speak to this.
It's not the majority.
Everybody's waiting on the majority to all agree that we need to move in a certain direction.
That is not the case.
Thank you for mentioning that.
That's so important.
The majority of people didn't wake up one day and go, let's free the slaves.
The majority of people didn't wake up one day and say, let's give women the right to vote.
It's because a small group of people usually considered outrageous radicals by the status quo of their day have a better idea.
That's how evolution works.
We fight too much.
We fight with nuclear bombs.
People say, oh, there have always been wars.
Not with the arsenals of nukes that we have.
We're the only planet known to systematically destroy our own habitat.
I mean, the only species.
So now I think what enlightenment represents, what the great spiritual masters are, is mutations.
That is such a powerful thought.
Okay, I've got to go back to that thought.
We're the only species that systematically destroy our own habitat.
Yeah.
In every advanced mammalian species that survives and thrives.
You see fierce behavior on the part of the adult female when she senses a threat to her cubs.
I mean when you look at the threat to the children of the world and the fact that our collective behavioral patterns do not display more.
That will not be happening in this house, which we do in our own private homes.
Yes.
We need to develop that consciousness about the whole planet.
You know, my mother was a very traditional housewife.
And she lived for my father and her home and her children.
And I grew up with the mistaken thought.
You know, I wanted to go out into the world and do something that I looked at as more important than my mother's life.
And it took me decades to know how wrong I was.
First of all... Was it your own daughter that did that for you?
Well, I think more than that.
First of all, because, no, because what she was about, I am also about with my daughter.
But with the world, I realized first of all, there is no out there, because it's all whatever is happening in front of you.
But also I realized in terms of the evolution of consciousness of the female.
We are here to take care of the children.
It's just that every child on the planet is one of our children.
We are here to take care of the home.
But this entire earth is our home.
So this archetype of the woman as the mother of the species, you see this in every advanced mammalian species.
If you don't take care of these babies, then the species does not necessarily survive.
So it's an extraordinary time where we're And now I feel so strongly that the people who are involved in spiritual, all of these things, we need to go.
You know this can't just be about crystals and rainbows and
La-di-da.
We should be the last people sitting out the great political and social issues of our day.
Because if you know what changes a heart, you know what changes the world.
Because all a nation is is a collection of individuals.
So I think we are now it's about are we going to take the wheel of the Titanic and turn this thing around?
Are we going to shift from probability into possibility vector?
Are we going to?
You know, Dr King?
Martin Luther King said about Gandhi that he turned love.
He lifted love beyond mere personal relationship and turned it into a broad scale social force for good.
Terrorists have taken hatred and turned it into a political force.
The only thing that will transcend that and transform that for us is if and when we turn love into a social and political force.
That's what King did.
That's what Gandhi did.
And I think that's what lies before us now.
Finish these sentences.
Okay.
The world needs.
Love.
Love.
Love.
I believe in.
God.
Love is.
Everywhere.
I am grateful for.
My daughter and my work.
Do I get to?
Yeah, you get to.
Whatever you want.
What is the soul?
For me, it's the truth of who we are, the light, the love which is within us.
It goes by different names, but the truth of us.
Michelangelo said when he got a statue that he would go to the quarry and get a big piece of marble.
And the way he imagined it, God had already created the statue.
And his job was just to get rid of the excess marble.
So that's what we're like.
Inside is the being that God has already created.
Some call it the Christ, the Buddha mind, the Shakina, the light, the soul.
And our job is to get rid of this excess, useless fear, thought forms of the world that actually hide the light of the soul.
What is your definition of God?
An all-encompassing love that is the source of all, the reality of all and the being through which I am.
That's good.
Thank you.
The being through which I am.
All right.
What does prayer?
You wrote a whole book on prayer Illuminata, so what does prayer mean to you?
The constant communication. with God.
I always think of the opening scene on Fiddler in the Roof.
God, this, you know, this talking.
That's this constant communication, the Course in Miracles says, of the created with the creator.
You say in Return to Love.
I remember it struck it personally, struck me.
You were saying that you'd spend a lot of time in your life praying for this thing or praying for that thing, and that you had made a decision to live in the space of being on your knees in prayer.
Right.
Have you been able to do that?
You know, I'm not an enlightened master, but I, you know where I am in my life?
I'm not evolved beyond having crazy thoughts.
But I think I'm beyond being in a place where I'm telling myself that they're not crazy.
You know, if I'm having an insane moment, I think I'm evolved enough to know I am insane in that moment, which means most of the time I'm evolved to the point where I don't act on any insanity I have.
Okay, specifically, you mean?
Wait before you send that email.
Yes, right.
Yes.
Right.
You can feel angry, but that doesn't mean you have to send that email.
It doesn't mean you have to answer the text right now.
It doesn't mean you have to say something.
You can know I'm feeling like saying, I'm feeling like telling that person, whoa.
Yeah.
But I can know this is not the real me feeling this.
The fact that I'm feeling it doesn't mean it's the authentic me.
Yes.
If you're angry and then you say well, that was how I authentically felt.
How you authentically feel in any given moment is not necessarily who you authentically are.
It's that gray cloud in front of the blue sky.
Who you authentically are is love.
But that person said something or did something that so triggered you, based on childhood wounds, that you're not able in this moment to answer with love and feel psychically like you're getting your needs met.
Is your personal prayer to be the woman that god would have me be and to do the things that he would have me do.
My, as you know, the morning prayer in illuminata is one of my favorite prayers and one of my two favorite lines is uh, dear god, i open myself to you.
Please enter where you already abide.
When i said that this morning, i was filled with such overwhelming love because the acknowledgement that sometimes I may be disconnected from you God, but I know that you're always present.
Please enter where you always abide.
You are the best prayer writer, sayer, giver I have ever known.
Thank you.
You are one praying woman.
How do the prayers come to you?
Maybe it's something about how bad I'm eating them.
No, you are the best prayer I have ever known.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Well, I had great-grandfathers who were rabbis.
Maybe those, I don't know.
Really?
Uh-huh.
So your personal prayer is, again?
That I am the woman that God would have me be.
Yes.
And that I do what God would have me do.
Yes.
That's the last line of the daily prayer.
Use me, dear God, that I might know the joy of being used by you.
Yeah, that's mine.
What do you think happens when we die?
I think it's extraordinary.
Light show.
Fabulous.
I mean, I don't want to rush there, but I just, all the blinders are off.
That's what I think, too.
The Course in Miracles says, one day you will realize death is not the punishment but the reward.
And it says that birth is not the beginning of life but a continuation, and physical death is not the end of life but a continuation.
And one day we will realize that the body is just a suit of clothes and that death will one day be experienced as just taking off a suit of clothes when they have served their purpose.
What do you know for sure?
That God is.
That God is.
Right.
Thank you.
Thank you.
That is the best.
You were your full self.
Thank you.
Your full, whole self.
Thank you for bringing your full, whole self.
Thank you.
Thank you.
I'm Oprah Winfrey and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast.
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