A Personal Interview with Marianne Williamson

I grew up at a time of counter-cultural change it was called it was I was in high school during a lot of the tumult of the 60s going into college in the 70s and there was a change in the air fundamental earthquake change there was the anti-war protests against the Vietnam War there was the sexual Revolution there was the musical explosion of Genius The Beatles Bob Dylan so forth it was just change in the era there was a sense that there was an old order that needed to be overthrown and a new generation was coming forth it was happening but then people who were Central to that revolutionary fervor were shot and killed in front of our eyes we were young and Bobby Kennedy Martin Luther King who looking back were young but they weren't as young as we were were holding a loft the dreams of the generation when they were killed those assassinations in some very significant ways psychically struck all of us it was so obviously a warning that was meant for each and every one of us and just in case we hadn't gotten the message they then killed uh students at Kent State University who were protesting the war so I think an entire generation was traumatized by those events and we got the message and the message was there will be no further protest you can go back into your lives in the private sector do whatever you want there and if you make a lot of money that's good too but leave the public sector alone leave it to whoever it is nobody could really tell you who it was but whoever it is that wants to control the public sector so bad you leave the public sector to them and no one needed to say or we might kill you too everybody got the message and an entire generation stepped back now not only did we step back from a lot of more public display of our passions and our passion for change but there was also this very strange split that was not there before for instance when I was in college I remember we would read ramdas in the morning we would read Alan Watts and then in the afternoon we would go to Vietnam War protests there wasn't this division between the spiritual change and the political change we stick at that time the sense that everything was changing and everything we we went to intersectionality before the word intersectionality came around after the assassinations when everything began to just sort of quiet down there seemed to be a split between those who were thinking you know what the only way to change things is through inner practice inner change spiritual change transformational change psychological change and almost looked to scans at people who are trying to change things on the level of politics because it had been so clear to us something deeper was awry here the other but on the other side there were people who doubled down wanted to go into politics and trans you know transactional change and seem to not know what are those people doing out in places like California it's kind of a a joke to say it but it's not completely untrue the transactional political types of the east coast and the more transformational spiritual types took the West Coast now where they were headquartered in the two different places in the country now for me I sort of never got the memo that we were supposed to stop because what happened was that around the time that everybody was saying okay I can't be a flower child forever I'm gonna go get a job in Corporate America and just become one of them really that's what the seduction basically was I sort of never stopped the never I like I said I never got the memo and I started lecturing On A Course in Miracles and my path just took me in an interesting pla an interesting Direction I was in my 20s I had left school in my junior year I told my parents I would come back but then I would just take classes at different universities and I went to live in a geodesic dome in in New Mexico and I just had a lot of experiences my parents were like what are you going to do what are you going to do I want to go back to school Mommy and Daddy I promise but what I really wanted to do was read metaphysical books now it was always really interested whether it was Eastern or Western never mattered to me you can put Saint Thomas Aquinas and I'm fascinated or St Augustine or Heidegger in front of me and I'm fascinated you could also put the downer Chang and the bhagavad-gita and uh carlgan in front of me and I'm fascinated by that anything that has to do with a higher mind once again the division between the kind of exoteric and esoteric religious and spiritual traditions I I I've always recognized these Universal threads and even though people like my parents were saying yeah but how are you going to make a living I was like well I'm a temporary secretary Mama I'm doing okay you can't be that forever I was told and when I was in my 20s I picked up a set of books on a on a coffee table at a party in New York City and it said A Course in Miracles intriguing title and I picked it up and I opened it up and in the introduction it said This Is A Course in Miracles it is a required course Free Will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum only that you can take what you want at any given time or any given part of it any given time that is so strange what book says it's a required course and then I look back to the front of it and there was no author mentioned it was just such an intriguing material then I continue to read and I saw all this Christian terminology I'm Jewish and I had read a lot when I was in school I studied comparative religion and philosophy so I had read a lot of Christian theologians and was fascinated but somehow this was my personal life so I thought you know I didn't know what it was you know I thought it was some Christian tone but I never forgot it I remember the the man whose house it was the young man whose house we were at said to me and to my boyfriend who was with me at the time um said the book is published if you ever wanted it's published out of an apartment the Beresford apartment building on Central Park West and I think 79th in New York City so that was that and then Jeff and I went home and I don't remember ever having any conversation about it again I don't remember him and me talking about it meanwhile a year later I'm on a bus and during that year I remember because I would ride the bus to and from work in in New York I was doing secretarial work and so forth and I was riding on the bus and sometimes I would see somebody reading the Course in Miracles wow one time I saw an ex-boyfriend of an old roommate of mine and she hadn't gotten along with him and I thought it was so interesting I didn't say anything to him he didn't see me but I noticed it so about a year after that party I was on the bus on Central Park West in New York and I was going to a doctor and during those years when I lived in New York City every year I got bronchitis and I was so tired of the bronchitis and for whatever reason going to the doctor again writing on Central Park West passing that apartment because I had never forgotten that they said well they're published out of the Beresford apartment building I said to myself I'm going to get that book I don't know why I just thought to myself I'm going to get that book now I went to the doctor went back to my apartment my boyfriend opened the door we I looked at the dining room table and there was the course of Miracles I was shocked and he said to me I thought it was time and then the next day so I was all excited and I told him I I was thinking about it today he said I thought it was time we walk the next day I thought this is so incredible and it was in three books there's a text and then there's a workbook and there's something called the manual for teachers so he said it would be really cool if each of us had a copy so he had bought them at a bookstore on West 72nd Street in New York City we walked over to the bookstore and we walked to the Shelf where he had gotten them and they weren't there so we said okay we'll ask if the cash register if um they have another copy and we went up to the cash register at that time I think it was still a little like card index cards or something I don't know old fasting cash registers and he asked and they said well let's look it up and then they said I'm sorry we've never had that book here so we like I think at this point millions of people probably have interesting stories about how we found A Course in Miracles some people have said things to me like my mother was on the operating table we were waiting in the waiting room somebody had it these interesting ways that that the book Finds Its way you know no path has a monopoly on truth I believe there's one truth spoken in many different ways and the course doesn't claim any Monopoly on truth it's a one statement of Universal spiritual themes but if it's for you you know it and when I started reading it even though I saw the Christian terms it becomes clear very quickly these terms have been used in very non um non-religious psychotherapeutically uh oriented terms and the course of Miracle says it calls to all religions and no religions I've known people you know your religious identity is is a separate issue in fact for myself as a Jew I never felt that it was calling me away from my religion as a matter of fact it made me feel has made me feel a deeper understanding of the mystical core of all the great religious systems including uh including Judaism you know because the course says it's based on universal spiritual themes I'm my passion but there wasn't a career doing anything with that in those days I remember the first day that I had gone over to that apartment on Central Park West and I was just so enamored and I was saying I'd love to volunteer if I could do anything and Judith Scotch who was the publisher of the book was leaving I remember looking at her as she got into the elevator and she was leaving to go to Houston which is my hometown born and raised and she was going to talk about the Course in Miracles that I'm thinking to be able to do with your life the to just go go around and talk about the Course in Miracles and then when I ended up living in Houston and I would give these Course in Miracles lectures at my bookstore now remember are these little study groups remember there was no career Niche like there is now of people who are non-denominational spiritual coaches or anything like that nothing like that even existed so there was nothing for me to be ambitious for and then when I moved to Los Angeles I was working at a place called The philosophical research society and there was a woman named Pat Irvin and she was tough man and she didn't like me I could tell that she didn't like me but she was real into like what she felt the Angels told her and she said well the Angels told me or whatever her phraseology was that you should give lectures here if you want I don't remember what it was but something about Pat Urban and they had people giving lectures on metaphysical things topics and the place was founded by a man named manly Hall so I started giving these Saturday morning talks on A Course in Miracles it would be like 10 15 people there but I was just so happy and I was a temporary secretary during the week and I just lived for these lectures and I combed the book with you know fine-tooth comb then I so prepared and I remember what I wore my first lecture I I couldn't tell you what I wore at any lunch with my entire career but I could tell you what I wore that first lecture and then she called me that afternoon and said it's like it was yesterday she called me that afternoon said would you like to do it every week and I was just over the moon the last thing I was thinking of was that you could make a living doing this because there wasn't a career doing this maybe you would ask if people get I think we uh for a suggested donation of three dollars and I started giving these lectures now I moved to Los Angeles in 1983. before I moved from Houston to Los Angeles I do remember having a phone call with a friend who said of a family member or a bro either a family member or close friend something terrible and he's dying and I said what do you mean he's dying he's like young so yeah but there's this disease there's this disease and they they can't they don't know what it is and then they say well don't they just need penicillin or something no it's this disease and she was describing AIDS and it was the first time I had heard of it but it was just the very very beginning so I had already heard that there was this disease out there and it was killing people and they didn't have a cure for it well I started lecturing in October of 1983 and within a few months AIDS burst onto the scene because remember I was living in Los Angeles people have asked me if it was similar to covid covid was very easy to get but the chances were that you would survive AIDS was very hard to get but the chances were that you would not survive and I was just giving these lectures about a God who loves you no matter what and how when we love each other enough miracles happen and so gay men started coming more to my lectures it was like I didn't even and more and more people started coming because Western medicine it's not like they weren't trying because they were trying uh to come up with some treatment for this disease and um the religious institutions were like had to get over their own homophobia or whatever it was they were eerily silenced and so gave in in LA in a very real way gave me my career and then we did things with that as the years went by we started places where we could have our support groups more for people with AIDS and I became a real AIDS activist but it was always along with the lectures it was always tied to that and then somebody suggested that I write a book and then I did I said I don't know how to write a book people would say you should write a book based on these lectures you give and I remember saying I don't feel pregnant with a book and they'd say well it's in those tapes and I said I don't know how to get it out of the tapes onto a page I'm not a writer and then one night I was in San Francisco because I would lecture in La two or three times a week and then I would travel to other cities I mean my my schedule was I flew a lot and uh there was a man named Dr Jerry Jam polski who was one of the original because he was a psychiatrist very much a part of that early Course in Miracles arrival in the world and we were eating dinner before my talk in San Francisco and he said um you should write a book I said everybody tells me I should write a book but I don't feel pregnant with a book he said it's in those tapes because we had these little cassette tapes he said it's in the casino I said I know I said I don't know how to get it out of the cassette tapes to a page and he said let's just join in Consciousness let's just join unconsciousness right now that there is someone out there who would know how to help you get it from the tapes to the page and that was a Thursday night in San Francisco two days later in LA on a Saturday morning after my lecture there a man came up to me said it was a literal age and I said oh this must it must be meant to be I told him and he said he would call me now this was the day days before phone message machines I don't know if he ever called me I feel sorry for the guy because he might have realized one day he sort of missed out or maybe he tried calling me I don't know but five days after that I was giving it so this is now a week to the day after the Thursday night in San Francisco I'm I gave a talk in New York City at the end of my talk there's a man standing there and I looked at him he was standing at the end of the line and I looked at him and I had a feeling I had Destiny with him and he introduced himself as Al LOM and he said I'm a literate agent have you thought about writing a book based on your talks I said everybody tells me too but I don't feel pregnant with the book he said uh it's in those little cassette tapes I said I don't know how to get it from the cassette tapes to the page and he said I can help you and he was my agent and he indeed put me together with a woman who helped me write a proposal and then when they when I look back on it now what happened was in ways that surprised me at the time and I'm probably surprised him there was a bit of an auction for the book because the man who was head of Harper San Francisco at the time was a very well-known editor when I think back and perhaps he himself was gay because he um then called New York and said this is a phenomenon all the gay guys in LA are coming to our electors all the gay guys in New York are coming to election because there was this you know like I said they gave me my career it became a kind of Hub of Hope and even social life you know we all gather on Tuesday night type of thing and then the support groups it was serious it was fun it was loving it was very profound profound thing going on so the book took a long time to write because I was not a writer my agent at the time said not just the return to love Jose he called it a course in writing then when it came out and it was late but it came out and Oprah Winfrey Show she did not yet have her book club but they were doing a show about a movie I think it was called crash and there was something about miracles in it and then one of they said well we need to get something as a hook for it and she told me later that one of her producers said well a book came for you to read for us to look at for show it's called a return to love Reflections on the principles of A Course in Miracles and then Oprah said I'll take it home and I'll read it this weekend and she loved it and she had me on and she said it was the best book she'd ever read and she gave a thousand copies to her audience so in a very real way she gave me you know the gay community had given me this like a life to live with this the work that we were all doing together and then when Oprah announced the book that way it became an instant bestseller and remained number one on the New York Times bestseller list for 35 weeks and she really opened up the space of possibility for me as an author and then I just continued with my work and continued to write books and continue to give lectures and continue to give classes and started non-profit organizations to help AIDS patients project angel food which was a an organization we started to give Meals on Wheels as it were to homebound people with AIDS at the time has now served 16 million meals so these things have continued I co-founded an organization called the peace Alliance and I was always a an activist I mean I grown up in a home where political passions and beliefs were very important my father was an immigration lawyer but I I definitely felt no my particular service and contribution in Dharma or what we want to call it has to do with teaching and coaching and the world of you know transformational internal change spiritual change um my parents would say we'll send you to rabbinical school I didn't I didn't want to be clergy I wanted to be what clergy is but without the institutional especially since I talk about Universal themes so then at a point later in my life I began to see a change in America and my career had from the beginning taken me all over the place and I had been I had felt privileged and blessed to be allowed into people's lives in some of their darkest moments the test results came back and it's cancer your child is addicted to heroin someone you love has died these things happen but I began to see something around the year 2000. it was different just a sense America was losing its optimism people were losing their sense of okayness more and more people living with anxiety and tension and fear then there had seemed to be before and I began to see how much of it was due to bad public policy people couldn't get you know until the 1960s and 70s there were ways to go to tuition-free public colleges and universities all of a sudden everything became hard people didn't have health care people didn't people were having to work at jobs that they hated just in order to have the health care benefits people couldn't afford Child Care people didn't have paid family leave people didn't couldn't afford to send their kids to college and when I was a young woman in the 1970s the average American worker had decent benefits and couldn't afford a house and could afford a car and could afford a yearly vacation and could afford to send their kids to college so I saw what has gone on here and I then you know did some math in my head what went on here was the Reagan Revolution what came on what had happened was that this was the the flowering the evil flowering really the dark spawn of trickle-down Economics this transfer of wealth into the hands of a very few Americans and I began to realize that every year that neoliberal economic philosophy was baked into the cake and I began to see how rigged the system had become now also remember because I was working for Oprah Winfrey who I think the world of and if anyone is a righteous billionaire and deserves her success it's Oprah and I'm not saying that there's the the you know that that's not possible because it is and the people that I met through her when her sort of world was opened up to me professionally I met some absolutely wonderful people among that .001 percent not every rich person is a greedy bastard there are nice people everywhere this has nothing to do with person you know personal anything it has to do with systems because I was on one hand exposed to the fabulousness of the highest of the high in terms of how the super rich really live and then I was exposed through my work to how the most disadvantaged in this Society lives particularly when I went to work as a non-denominational minister at a church at Blue Collar Church in metro Detroit Michigan and I went oh my God because your kids aren't any smarter than your kids you don't have any more Divine potential than you have but the system helps you and you can fall and the system is forgiving and will pick you up and you there is no wiggle room for you there is no real we say there's a safety net but it's it's a system that just leaves so many people out and it's gotten worse and worse and worse you know when I was in college over 300 000 people incarcerated in this country now they're 2.3 million so I was just watching all this I was just watching what was happening to this country and I was watching the decline of the spirit of this country you know there was a time you and I had a conversation a few minutes ago and you were talking about your own country and you said when I was here a few years ago I was proud every time my country was mentioned and that was no longer true and that's what happened to me I grew up at a time when we were the hot we were the cool and we were not the hot and we were not the call I don't mind that we're no longer hot and cool but I mind the reasons why we're no longer hot and cool and also because I have traveled a lot internationally I saw how many of the problems you know I've been raised I first started to travel when I was a little girl so it was post-world War II Europe was just Rising back up so of course the United States was ahead in a lot of things and I just watch it completely change and I I was shocking to me it was the European countries that had the health care and had the educational system and how the airports and how the trains and how they're like whoa and we were just you could just see the decline in this country and I because of my work would often know politicians and I would also be involved in in lobbying efforts through various non-profits that I either was working for I was a board member or lobbying for you know an activist and I wasn't always a Democrat I was supporting Democrats I was um you know I was a voter I would do fundraisers I would do what I could but I began to see something I didn't like um I would say you know I really got to talk to you these people really need health care this isn't this is not good you really these people need health care and the politicians even in my own party would say yeah it's so true we're working so hard I thought okay they're going to work on it and then five years later I would just notice how things wouldn't fundamentally change five years later yeah we're we got to work hard five years later I would be told things like well why don't you start a Super Pac and you could raise a lot of money and I'm like oh my God oh my God this is this is not good Something's Happened and at that point I thought I'm gonna run myself and I ran for Congress and then when I ran for president in 2020 I just knew in my heart I had things I wanted to say and now in 2024 it was not the same like I'm gonna run for president it was a tough decision to make because I had been in the belly of this piece before and it's not pretty what's in that belly at that Beast and uh there's efficientness and a corruption there that is dark and there is what I call a political media industrial complex the multi-billion dollar industry is what it's all become and um I knew from last time that if they don't want you in the conversation they have ways of getting you out of that conversation the smears the lies of character assassinations and so it so I had to um I had to think long and hard about this because I knew it was running into a burning building but I felt the image I got was that I would be filled with a kind of spiritual fire retardant now someone told me um a young woman told me something that really has stayed with me she said you know you know the most successful tightrope walkers are people who do not have a net and I really relate to that you just have to get on that tightrope and walk and it's you know it's an emotional roller coaster it's um you know the Erasure the invisibilizing the smears the attacks a hatred that comes at you this irrational enemas but I'm saying something that I believe needs to be said and as president I would do something that I believe needs to be done and people who think oh you've never served in office listen I've spent time in those rooms at the highest of the high and I know what there's this Wizard of Oz aspect about the whole thing you know you know if anything I want to pull down the curtain and uh the more I read the more I read about great presidents the more I thought no no my ideas are more in line with the trajectory of great the great historical movements in the United States that system and most of the people in it not all of it there's some wonderful people who are candidates and who are legislators all over the country but they're it's almost like they're locked within a system that itself is stuck and which itself is going to rise which itself is out of alignment with the highest aspirations of of the Declaration of Independence and the real ideals of the United States why because they're all under the thrall of these multi-billion Dollar corporate interests and those are their donors and so the people are not the problem the American people were no better or worse than people anywhere else and you could see you know whether it has you with Universal Health Care Free College on issue after issue even guns gun safety the vast majority of Americans want one you know moderate things they want even gun owners want Common Sense gun safety laws uh Republicans and Democrats want tuition-free college Republicans and Democrats want Universal Health Care but the system is institutionally resistant to providing those things because those things do not provide the corporate profits for the corporate donors that keep all those people in their jobs and it's sick and it's corrupt and it's wrong and it has taken us six inches from the cliff and I'm not the kind of woman who is going to be quiet about that and no I'm not making any money doing this I'm losing a lot actually because I have a career where as long as you don't mention politics I can do quite well and make a nice living and people like you um so no this is not a grift it is um me living my heart's calling to the best of my ability why do you think they aren't interested in politics what when it actually affects them very much I think there has been a well-strategized effort to make people think that politics is the purview of some expert class I'll leave it to them the myth of the experts the myth of a political class which is the opposite of a democracy you know Thomas Jefferson said the only safe Repository for Powers the hands of the people and we have allowed ourselves to give it up the French say if you don't do politics politics will do you and I think a lot of the people who have routinely said I'm not into politics or waking up to the fact that well politics has done me because it's political why there's so much forever chemicals p5s in your water it's political why their whole sacrifice zones where people's children are getting asthma and horrible respiratory illnesses besides that one because of the toxins being spun and dispute into the air it is political that we have we're ramping up fossil fuel extraction in the very time when we should be ramping it down and this could threaten literally the habit habitability of the planet it's political whether or not we go into Wars like Iraq it's political whether or not we have Universal Health Care so I think a lot of people are beginning to awaken and what they really mean by I'm not political is I'm not part of that vicious corrupt toxic system I don't want any part of it most of them are liars most of them are just you know and and I understand they're the people's feeling that way people who feel the vote doesn't make a difference people who feel no matter what party they vote for things don't fundamentally change for them I understand all that but I also understand that we have to wake each other up right now because the only thing that will change that system is it rounds all of enough people that we override those forces and the word politaia you know the root comes from of the people you know it was never supposed to be you know it's become a kind of corporate machinery and people are just Pawns but they have a choice here and it's so sad how many of them think yeah but what can you do and I'm standing right here hello it's quite frustrating and then the Press has made them feel what you can't vote for her you can't vote for her because you know she's not qualified but their idea of qualified is someone qualified to perpetuate the system as it is I feel what makes me qualified is that I'm qualified to disrupt it that's the qualification needed today and then if that doesn't work they paint whatever mischaracterization of you to make people think oh you couldn't listen to her she's not a nice person or she's crazy as crystals or she's abusive or they they know what they're doing I mean they're they're they're good PR Masters and it's sad to see how many people fall for it those are all the the the um machinations of missing misinformation and disinformation it is it's an interesting shifting landscape however we've seen lately that figures like of course Joe Rogan even Tucker Carson's departure from Fox News and he's starting it up starting him his own thing up on Twitter like combining Universal brands alternative Outlets that are ranking up views that are almost higher than this absolutely how do you think that that should well yeah I mean yes if they were all having me on um all that you mentioned had Bobby Kennedy on um you know Russell Brand has had me on but Joe Rogan has not had me on Elon Musk is given Twitter spices to Kennedy has not been willing to have me on even though he said I'll have you know any presidential candidate so a lot of those independent Outlets um have chosen to erase me as much as some of the mainstreams have I haven't quite figured it out it's some irrational animus it's misogyny you know and I'm not saying that I don't have my own in the course of Miracles it says you take a very you pay a very high price for not taking 100 responsibility for your own experience um and the price you pay is that you can't change it so I'm seeking to do whatever in a work well did you ever raise your voice yeah I did I shouldn't have done that and I'm so sorry that that person feels just felt disrespected and I want to speak in a kind of way but the stuff that's reported is just so over the top it's ridiculous and uh I was reading an article today about Joe Biden's temper and of course it's all in the context of making it very understandable people weren't doing their jobs and um very protected you know the article protects them from any you know how do you gather your strength I'm a meditator I my spiritual connection is everything it's why I'm doing this and until I feel in my heart that something is telling me give it up and stop then my only option is to give it all I have and you know the course in Miracle says Love is Real nothing else really deeply ultimately exists and this is the highest spiritual challenge I've ever had we have a corporate aristocracy in this country Universal excuse me insurance companies pharmaceutical companies food companies chemical chemical companies agricultural companies gun manufacturers uh big oil and defense contractors and there's a difference between righteous profit which I'm all for I'm profiteering and in too many cases in too many ways those people profiteer they serve their own short-term profit maximization goals before any ethical consideration or moral consideration in some cases even legal consideration for the health and safety and well-being of the American people and the President should be the advocate for the people the President should not be serving a dual function and a lot of people who run some of those Industries we'd have a nice dinner perhaps but they'd know unequivocally hussado was on and they would come at me vehemently the way they came at uh Franklin Roosevelt they called him a socialist and they'd call me a socialist and the difference between me and every other modern president but what makes me similar to Roosevelt is I would say what he said I welcome their hatred that would be my presidency and you have no personal fear getting assassinated anything I think that I'm not naive about how America operates yeah one world is falling apart an old institutional order of things is crumbling in front of our eyes this is a time of profound phase transition and the Masters of the old are trying to keep the lid on the impulse of new beginnings because they find that threatening because it is threatening the old order but that old order is passing away it will either pass away through wisdom or it will pass away through chaos so simultaneously to that sense of Decline and Devolution is this evolutionary impulse they're happening simultaneously of a new world that is so clearly struggling to be born you see the kids out the environmental protests all over the world you see everything of people trying to bring forth something more beautiful something more true and you really see this in young people whose souls are crying out for it who have such a such a realization that the world is not what it should be um at this point I think we're called to be both death doulas and birth doulas we're called to be people capable of helping the old die they just and gentle death that harms no one and to proactively give birth to what is possible in order to do that I do believe we have to do what you just said because everything you do is infused with the Consciousness with which you do it it's like the Einstein line that the problems of the world will not be solved from the level of thinking we were at when we created them so we're all at the effect in the ways that you said well at the effect of the tablets wallet the affecting young people's minds and everybody nobody has an impulse control and everybody's texting and wishing that they had never texted it and all of those things and as Martin Luther King said we need quantitative changes in our circumstances and qualitative shifts in our souls now you said countries don't prioritize that some do Tibet does you know some of the there are countries that do but in Western Europe and America we certainly don't but there are individuals and cultural movements in your country and my country all over the world of an Awakening the 21st century Consciousness is in mindset is different than the 20th the 20th century mindset in the west very mechanistic the world is a big machine it's a kind of Newtonian model and if you don't like what's happening in the world you just tweak pieces of the machine that's passing away because it clearly didn't solve all our problems that very mechanistic way of looking at the World created and exacerbated some of our problems the 21st century is far more whole person for far more holistic uh there is a British physicist named James jeans who said that it turns out the world is not one big machine it's one big thought so now the Primacy of Consciousness and the way that you described finding your own Center finding that spiritual Sweet Spot once you realize which is very different than the mechanistic Paradigm of the 20th century their Consciousness is primary their Consciousness is the level of cause and everything that happens out there is the level of effect then you realize attending to your inner life is absolutely essential if we're to make the kinds of external changes that are needed I think people are willing to hear that yearning to hear that then we know the problem is not the people problem is this Behemoth of soulless corporate power married to governmental Authority in a way that is a an oppressive and suppressive element and in a way that retains the good we need to smash it peacefully non-violently but no little tweak here or tweak there is going to fix this has become a system of Oppression and tyranny so if you're in the top 20 percent of Americans the economy is good for you and and that's good the problem isn't that people can get rich here the problem is that not nearly enough people ever have a chance so many people are locked out so many people are locked out even before they're 10 years old and as president I would seek to initiate a seasonal repair a new economic beginning that allowed America to realign itself with the sense that all men are created equal and everyone should get a fair shot how would you address those kinds of corporate well first of all I would not be appointing them to positions of power and I think some of the people I would want to appoint may or may not get confirmed by the Senate get depending on who is in charge of the Senate I realize that and I would also be able to use the bully pulpit to talk about what's really happening and I would be able to use executive orders there's a lot the president does do the president can unilaterally for instance cancel the willow project despite what Big Oil wants now if you're a president you're planning to run again and it's all about protecting the power that's there you go wow I better not do that but for me it's like no that's why I'm here to do that and I think that this would be a moment of Awakening I think I I don't think of my presidency as a two-term thing I don't think it's supposed to be a two-term because there's a radicalism you know in in the best sense of the word and I think America is a radical idea that cannot be undercut should not be undercut by oh if I want to run again no no no no no I want to make these changes and then say to whoever they're trying taking this away from people see how they're going to feel about that um and and then you turn it over to someone younger and I will have helped give a kind of Chiropractic alignment I was saying to someone the other day I want to help America the government get its heart back and in a way people get their spine back well there are so many people who know what to do to repair this country who know what to do about agriculture who know what to do about energy who know what to do about repairing people's lives who know what to do about health but the people with Solutions don't have the power and the people with power don't really all the time want to hear the people's Solutions because they don't necessarily create corporate profits for their donors it is that crazy and I my job as I see it would be to connect power to the problem solvers well spoken yeah definitely definitely but you also have some interesting initiatives yourselves yourself with the Department of Children and Youth I don't think I've heard that there are many ways in which the children of the United States are in crisis once again not the children of the most Financial advantaged people they're doing fine um but millions and millions of American children live lives in crisis and are in situations where by the time they're 10 years old their chances of incarceration are higher than their chances of high school graduation so I want to see a massive transfer of focus and resources into the lives of children at a very young age we have children who are traumatized by the time they go to preschool I've had elementary school principals in this country tell me that they had Elementary School students on suicide watch so that's why I wanted Department of Children and Youth we are agencies as they now exist are completely overwhelmed they can't take on uh they're just part of another agency Health and Family Services so that I want and I also want a department of Peace So that we get about the work of proactively waging peace in our time what are some ways well there are four uh there are four factors which are statistically proven to indicate a higher incidence of peace and a lower incidence of violence these are the factors of Peace building number one greater economic opportunities for women number two greater educational opportunities for children number three the reduction of violence against women and number four the amelioration of unnecessary human despair war is to peace what sickness is to health war is simply the absence of peace peace is not the absence of war and that's why we need to proactively cultivate through humanitarian action through diplomatic action the conditions of peace how would you pay for those things without making all my earning money go away to the government well none of this needs uh addition to middle-class taxes of any fundamental weight whatsoever what you have in the United States today is people who are very very wealthy who pay less taxes relatively to people who are making much more much less money than they are we are paying billions of dollars in corporate subsidies to companies that are already making billions of dollars in profits in 2017 there was a two trillion dollar tax cut 83 cents of every dollar went to the highest earners and the richest corporations that should be repealed the middle class tax cut part of it was very good and should be put back even among the middle class though if I say to you you're going to pay ten dollars more but you're going to save a hundred dollars in health care costs you still come out ahead so it's it's not about higher taxes it's about what your tax money is going for also there should be a reduction of the Pentagon budget and also there should be a wealth tax where people who make 50 million dollars and more uh pay an extra two percent people who make a billion in assets you pay an extra one percent uh President Biden had wanted to hire more um uh IRS agents in order to catch those who are very very wealthy who are using all these illegal means to get out of their taxes and of course the Republicans didn't want that to happen once it protect them so we just as soon as we stop protecting the ultra Rich uh from their having to pay their fair share there's going to be a lot more money for the comp to spend on the common good yeah I think the most honest and transparent president that we've seen in a very very long time yeah I think people would be amazed what I come out and say but I think that that's true even of the campaign I'm not saying anything everybody doesn't know I'm just saying it when the mic is on it's like she actually said it do you believe she said that yeah we need a president just says what we all already know and I feel that Bernie Sanders said it and says it and that's what they loved about Bernie how would you say that you differ from Bernie well I'm a woman and he's a man and I'm he's someone who's been in politics all his life and I come from the world of spirituality and personal transformation but in terms of our commitment to social justice of the same tree we both come from that Eastern European Jewish stock you know um politically he reminds me in many ways of my father the family I grew up in yeah I don't know what the best advice I've ever gotten but I know the best advice I give myself number one relax and number two get over yourself so it's not that other people have said it to me so much as I know that I'm served when I say to myself get over yourself Marian this is not about you

Channel: Marianne Williamson

Views: 44,646

Keywords: Marianne Williamson, Marianne Williamson (author), A Course In Miracles, ACIM, Consciousness, Love, Happiness, Spirituality, Humanity, Our Deepest Fear, A Return to Love

Id: TX_9oF70PmY

Length: 51min 51sec (3111 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 11 2023