Marianne Williamson - Forgiving and Releasing 2020

hello everybody i want to welcome you to this um event tonight this service this talk this teaching we're going to be doing some very serious work tonight it's serious it's joyful but it's serious in that it has to do with where we deeply sit within ourselves i want to speak a little bit about the context of this conversation tonight some of you will see it within a religious context some of you spiritually some of you from a completely secular perspective and it totally doesn't matter there's a part in the course in miracles where it says that religion and psychotherapy at their peak are the same thing what we're talking about is our mind our perspective our consciousness and the effect that that will have the thoughts we choose to think the effect that that will have on the life that we live now and the life that we will live in the future now for some of you might know i'm a student of a course in miracles course in miracles is not a religion it's a self-study program of spiritual psychotherapy that is based on universal spiritual themes so the material the ideas that i'm talking about are taken uh from the course in miracles but you just you just as with anything else you take what works for you leave what doesn't but also you translate in whatever language works for you okay now what we will do to begin with is i'd like to ask you to close your eyes and take a deep breath we see in the middle of our mind a little ball of golden light and we watch this light as it begins to grow larger and larger until now it covers the entire inner vision of our mind and with this we consciously and willingly drop just lay aside all ultimately unimportant things and we see in this space of golden light within us a temple wherein we are older on having been brought here by the presence of a power greater than ourselves love that is that the center of all things the god of our understanding and it is to this power that we dedicate our time spent together tonight all that occurs within us and all that will unfold and so it is we say amen so america not just america in large part the world is going through a tremendous reckoning and this is i think obvious to everyone so i want to start with the idea that the building blocks of the universe are basically built around the law of cause and effect that humanity gets what we put out and we have in our country certainly but i know many people here from other places as well this applies to a lot of places we have put out lovelessness our economic system has not been based on love our treatment of the earth has not been based on love and reverence our treatment of other countries our treatment of other citizens we have developed a kind of dog-eat-dog rugged individualism has become rugged narcissism we have placed the rich over the poor we've placed getting more over being more all the things that everybody already knows and now the karma whatever you want to call it the effects it's all coming back at us everybody knows this and it is not reasonable to assume that next year all the problems are going to be over one big symptom one big aspect one big actor in the bigger problem is no longer going to be a major actor as he has been we know this to be true but there's more to it than that and because of that there's no reason to assume that next year all of our problems are going to be over so tonight is not about asking that karma not operate tonight is not about saying oh well we've caused certain things but could the effects please stop because they're not going to tonight is about our willingness to become the people that we need to be not only to endure the drama that will continue to come next year but also to become the people in whose presence and from whose behavior will emerge the power to transform the drama that will be happening next year to navigate the turbulent waters the turbulent waters are not going to be over but what we need to be is masses of people who are like a big ship that can avoid the storms that need to be avoided and can navigate whatever turbulence is inevitable and so what we recognize what we come to recognize and this is this is gandhian this is martin luther king this is the philosophy of non-violence which is political philosophy based on spiritual understanding that we have to be the change this can't just be something you put on your computer screen be the change it's as gandhi said the end is inherent in the means so if we want the world to change next year our preparation for calling forth a world of repair a world that is healing has to do first of all without being willing to be the vessels of the kind of change repair and healing that needs to occur now one of the biggest problems we have is that this last year affected us so deeply psychologically and emotionally as well as economically as well as physically so much of what occurred this year has already loaded us down with anxiety with fear with anger with frustration with every negative emotion you can imagine and even though there was this you know temporary high well at least you know we'll have a new president we'll have a new beginning it's begun to have sunk in we know that the all the problems aren't over and so what i want to talk to you about tonight is how we want to leave at the door of the end of this year a lot of this accumulated toxicity that we've allowed to infuse our own being neither the left nor the right on our political spectrum has a monopoly on anger and mean-spiritedness at this point we all have to look at ourselves we're real big on pointing at other people they're the problem they're the problem they're the problem the question is not who's the problem the question is whether or not we are willing to be the answer the answer with a capital a now i'm going to throw a little metaphysics at you here of course the miracle says that god has an answer to every problem the moment the problem occurs now be with me on this imagine a gps and you take the wrong route the gps will automatically recalibrate and show you another way humanity has taken the wrong route the united states american democracy has taken the wrong route in too many ways systems of systems of injustice rather than justice prevail economically criminally racially we know what's going on i don't need to spell out for anybody here tonight what's going on the issue is god has answered every problem the moment the problem occurs so what does that mean in terms of these social political and emotional and psychological conditions it means that each and every one of us have it within ourselves to become the people to become the men and women who in collaboration with other people this is not about how next year it's all going to be solved because we're going to find one person who's going to solve everything that's not the way that's not the zeitgeist of this moment the zeitgeist of this moment has to do with an evolutionary leap of the whole human race so the zeitgeist of this moment is that if you rise up to become the woman that you are capable of being and you rise up and become the man that you are capable of being just better where you can be in all the ways that we're going to talk about here tonight then in collaboration with other people we're going to become a field a possibility whereby this ship is turned around this ship that otherwise could go right into the iceberg i mean with covet it it's important that we all understand it was covered but it could have been other things it could have been a nuclear disaster weather disaster climate change so bad that whole swaths of continents are uninhabitable because of the heat massive economic collapse massive food shortage hundreds of millions of climate refugees these are the kinds of things that actually could happen in the next seven to ten years if we don't deal with climate change on the level of mass global emergency that it is that is the kind of radical response that we have to have to the problems in the world in addition to that we already had in the united states we already had 40 million people living in poverty 93 million living near poverty now you've got at least 8 million people thrown more into poverty we have social and economic conditions right now among millions of people in the united states as bad as was experienced by people during the great depression i mean it's overwhelming plus we haven't even seen the climax yet of this current surge of covet so i don't need to you know go down the list with you and go there are so many red light blinking red lights but my message to you tonight is first of all there's no order of difficulty in miracles a miracle is what happens when we inside ourselves shift in the way that we need to shift it's not like if you shift everything's going to be okay if she shifts everything's gonna be okay if he shifts everything's gonna be okay it's not like that but if you shift and you shift and you shift and you shift you know in the bible there's the story of armageddon and armageddon is there's going to be this great war and after that and then jesus is going to going to come and there's going to be a thousand years of peace well if you're not a traditional christian i was like well i don't think quite so but if you look at that story from a metaphysical perspective it's this for some people your cancer diagnosis was your arm again and for somebody else you're divorced with your arm again and for somebody else your bankruptcy was your arm again and in a way these collective challenges this is the great war we're going through it together now now armageddon is followed by peace and peace comes from wisdom you got divorced you learned some things you're wiser because of it you went bankrupt you learned some things you're wiser because of it you went through cancer you learn some things and you're wiser because of it we've all been through our own individual armageddons and now if we take some of the wisdom that you got and some of the wisdom that you got and some of the wisdom that you got some of the wisdom that i got then together we can go forward and you're going to be assigned to the area of the world in the area of the country and the area of activity that you're assigned to through where you happen to be and somebody else is going to be assigned to where they're going to be assigned where they're going to be what they happen to be doing but each of us in whatever place that we are whatever relationships we're in whatever circumstances we're in we have it within us next year to be so lifted in consciousness that where we were harsh we will now be gentle where we were chaotic we will now be peaceful where we were unwise and angry we will now be calm and kind we will be smarter we can be all those things which represent us not as victims not as at the effect of but standing forth as genuine transformers of the times in which we live somebody sent me a card the other day it was so beautiful it was a line from jean-paul and he said these are not beautiful times but they are our times and these are our times they're not what any one of us would have chosen but they are our times and other generations of americans and other generations in other parts of the world have risen to the occasion which was the challenge of their times and that's what we can do with ours and each of us will be given a little piece of the garden and you don't even have to know right now what your little piece of the garden is but it will be your experiences it will be your circumstances it will be the things happening in your life your relationships where you will be challenged you will be invited to be more than you might have been had you not allowed yourself to just released release all the negativity and the toxicity that we accumulated this year is a line in the course of miracles that says miracles occur naturally as expressions of love and really this is common sense i'm kinder to you you're kinder than to me we give each other a break we are charitable towards one another we're generous towards one another we're forgiving towards one another guess what life works obviously people are mean to each other irreverent unkind attacking snarky guess what things fall apart and when you are in a state of love when we are at our best when we have forgiven when we are kind when we are generous we're smarter it's an emotional intelligence and we attract miracles what we do what we say attracts things working in a higher order but when we deflect love and we instead choose in every moment we're choosing we're choosing either consciously or unconsciously but when we choose to close our hearts to be unkind to be attacking to lie about people to not give people the benefit of the doubt all those things that our society is man's so good at these days then we deflect the miracle that would otherwise occur and we need miracles we need radical breakthroughs that's what a miracle is it's a breakthrough in a situation where there had not been a breakthrough and those breakthroughs are brought about by love we all have love inside us but when we have been infused with all the anger and all the toxicity and all the shame and all the lovelessness and fear that has just assaulted us all year if we take that into 2021 then 2021 will not be that much different in our experience than 2020 was so this is what i want to do and some of you i know have a piece of paper that you might want to write this down this is the time to be radically honest with yourself they were so tempted to just talk about how they got it wrong they get it wrong people on social media i can't even believe it this person has a wrong that person has it wrong you know real growth in life is like where do i have it wrong and so you know where we're got false it's not where we're about it's where we're wounded so it could be your shame or it could be your harshness it could be your pain or it could be your own unforgiveness whatever it is if you have a piece of paper there write it down if it's not you your best if it's you as less than you could be write it down because you can leave it at the door and the way it works is that from a metaphysical perspective we in the present moment either are an open clean slate allowing love to come into us and work through us in such a way that the gps can operate and even the things that were mistakes before can turn into a different route towards solution or we can bring all the stuff and the negativity from the past into the present which will only ensure that the future is just like the past and then we'll say see nothing ever changes so right now write it down if you can anger unforgiveness boy i know about that they did this they did that well you know there's a there's a buddhist story i love this one it's about these two buddhist monks and they were approaching a river and they were going to swim across it and this woman came up and said i don't know how to swim so could i please get on your shoulders and then when you swim across the water could i just ride on your shoulders and then when we get to the other side i'll get off and go my way and one of the monks said sure and he let the woman get on his shoulders and they swam across the river and then they got to the other side and the monks said goodbye to the woman and the woman went one way the monks went another way and the monks walked along in silence and they walked for about a mile and the monk who did not carry the woman says that the man who did carry the woman you know i just have to speak it really bothers me that you a monk a celibate monk would let a woman ride on your shoulders over the water and the monk who carried her said i just carried her over the water you've been carrying her ever since we're all tempted what they did to you what they did to this country blah blah blah they did it and if you continue to attack back in your mind then whatever was done to you will recreate itself because you placed yourself in the space of being at the effect of what occurred and real forgiveness means knowing if it wasn't love it doesn't have any ultimate permanent effect unless you carry it with you you don't want to be bitter about what they did to you you don't want to dwell in self-pity that will make you someone who doesn't attract the miracles of genesis and regeneration you don't want self-pity you don't want victimization you don't want bitterness you want to be a vessel a container a conduit by which things begin again and miracles happen and no matter what anybody did to you there are lessons there there are lessons there that have to do with what tiny even the smallest thing you might have done to attract that and it also has to do with knowing who you have to be to transform it and it also means having faith that no matter what anybody did love will always regenerate itself as on the earth as long as there are conduits to which it can operate so once again 2021 is going to be intense it's not like all the craziness is over we have no idea what's going to happen we just we have no idea but it is unreasonable to assume everything's gonna be okay now um it's not that simple one world is falling apart and another world is being born that's what's happening here and you can talk about it in terms of the jupiter saturn conjunction you can talk about it in terms of just historical phase transition it's really it's all the same but one historical phase its operating principles are no longer adequate they do not meet the needs of the moment and of the human race and of the planet and much is crumbling and it's our job to be like hospice workers for that so that so that the disintegration can be gentle you know i remember a friend of mine some friends of mine saying years ago mary don't worry about the the planet you know don't don't worry the plan is actually gonna be fine i mean it might have to kick us off for 200 000 years but the planet will be fine well that's not funny actually because if conditions in terms of humanity's malfeasance and lack of reverence towards the planet and lack of care for the planet become so unsustainable that the planet just has to kick us off for a few hundred thousand years that scenario is accompanied by such massive levels of of human and other species suffering is to be unimaginable i mean i think that's what we we need to really as adults take in right now you think covet is bad try a nuclear disaster and don't kid yourself the level of irresponsibility with which some of our nuclear issues are treated rivals the irresponsibility with which we handle covet this is not a time to be ostracists it's time to be very sober mature adults and to know something does seriously need to change and know like thinking oh well certain president is going to change it or certain one person is going to change it it's going to be an entire massive fundamental shift in consciousness whereby we stand up and take our citizenship very seriously are adultered very seriously our manhood very seriously our womanhood very seriously or other whatever your sexual identification is your humanity very seriously the course in miracles says those who've achieved the most have achieved a fraction of what all of us are capable of enough with the woundology enough with the ditziness enough with the distractedness enough with the oh well it is you know it's just so traumatizing no no no no no when you think of what other people have gone through think of what it would have been like to be in france during the occupation think what it would have been like to be um a woman suffragette thrown into jail think what it would have been like to be slaved enslaved think what it would have been like to be an abolitionist and think what it is like in some countries today even today a woman who is an activist who is imprisoned in saudi arabia and we can only hope that when president-elect biden becomes president that one of the first things they will do is to stand up to saudi arabia arabia and support of this woman just as we hope they will stand up for the armenians there's so many ways in which we hope that the united states will claim moral core again in our foreign policy and in our domestic policies but none of this is going to happen unless we stand up and make it happen and what that means specifically for you you will know tonight isn't about knowing exactly what you're going to do it is about committing within yourself you're going to do it and the more you meditate the more you pray the more you read the more you do the work of aligning yourself with all that will bring forth within you higher wisdom and higher intelligence the more effective you will be at serving the world and that's what the world needs it needs you not like somebody else it needs you and it's not going to be anybody else who's going to tell you what your part is life will tell you what your part is but honoring your incarnation is a lot and for those of you who are my fellow americans the very fact that we are citizens of such a powerful country whose policies for better or for worse makes such a difference in the lives of so many millions and millions of people let us take this very very seriously so anything that is our own victimization negativity lack of forgiveness self-pity anger at them blaming others thinking we know other people don't know other people need to know it the way we know it all of that stuff you might just want to write it down we're gonna we're going to ask that it be burned in the alchemical fires of transmutation tonight you cannot be the man that you want to be the woman you want to be the human being you want to be by whatever sexual identification you cannot be that person if you're holding on to those energies we were all infected by them this year we were all infected by them this year leaving it all at the door so for those of you who have pencil and paper i wish i had i didn't even put a pencil and paper in my own on my own desk here you might want to write it down because we're going to then close our eyes and we're going to be putting into a big fire of transmutation transmutation you can keep writing while i'm talking if you have some things that you writing down there that you're going to just not take with you you know like when people say she has a lot of baggage she has a lot of baggage that's a pretty good description don't take it with you into 2021 you don't need to you can totally disagree you know now a lot of people are going to shift them it's all donald trump's fault it's all mitch mcconnell's fault and that's just not the thinking that's going to get us there we have to stand for the world that we want not just to cry the world that we don't want and so we have to imagine and articulate what a genuinely sustainable world will would be what is genuine genuinely sustainable policies when it comes to the environment what are genuinely sustainable policies when it comes to poverty and poverty eradication what are genuinely sustainable criminal policies what are genuinely sustainable economic policies environmental policies personal ways of being not just what we don't want but what we do want the reason we got so much of what we don't want is because we had not been proactive at cultivating what we do want and the reason we weren't was we thought other people were handling that and we were just thinking about building our own lives what we wanted it to be we were so childish collectively well other people are handling that other people are political i'm not political really i've been saying for a very long time good luck with all that you drinking your green juice gluten-free good luck with that because they're poisoning the water and they're poisoning the sky the poisoning the earth i've been saying for so long there is no no public issue that will not make it to your private door and that's why for myself personally people say why don't you just stay in your lane your lane has to do with personal transformation because i saw so many people's lives up close people who had done everything right and yet the dark and unjust public policies were affecting them in ways that they could not just on a private basis overcome and they shouldn't have to not in the richest country in the world so we have to change this thing we have to totally turn this ship around it is headed for the iceberg covert was just one form and it was a slap on the universe and it wasn't a light tap either we have to not just deal with covet we have to end the trajectory of dysfunction and malfeasance and greed and injustice that is taking us in such an unsustainable direction and unsustainable is not an ugly enough word for what that means it means systems breaking down even greater than what we saw this year but god has an answer to every problem the moment the problem occurs that means if you download your part and you download your part and you download your part and i download my part and you learn from your arm again and you learn from your arm again and you learn from your armageddon doesn't mean that all of us are going to be enlightened masters next year but it means you're going to be more than you were and i'm going to be more than i was and you're going to be wiser and you're going to be smarter and i'm going to be wiser i'm going to be smarter and we're not going to monitor each other so much and we're going to give each other a break and we're going to support each other more than tear each other down and when we hear of friends and colleagues who have dreams big dreams we're going to support them proactively support them and being everything that they can be because it's only when everybody is given a greater chance to be what they can be that the human race can be what it can be and so right now i want us to remember first of all we are putting all this negativity into these transmutational fires and this is where the idea of a power greater than our own comes in this is where you just ask that these things be taken away but also when we go into this meditative space that we're about to go into i want you to remember what i said before that according to the course in miracles all of us have achieved a fraction of what all of us are capable of no matter what you've achieved you've just haven't even hit your stride yet we've all made mistakes so of other people forgiveness means knowing that behind every jerk you know we've all act like acted like jerks at various times but there's an undeletable file within us in our consciousness which is the truth of who we are and the course in miracles i love this the course says that all the things we've done that were mistakes that deflected miracles deflected the good that could have been in that relationship the opportunity we could have taken advantage of in that work or whatever the miracles we could have had are held in trust for us until we're ready to receive them so next year doesn't have to be the year in which you were at the effect of your mistakes from before this moment next year does not have to be the year in which you are at the effect of what other people said about you or did to you next year can be the year in which all of the things that might have been true for you if you had just gotten it right and been more loving and been more wise it's all coming back to you because you've gotten it now you have a tone now and next year is a year in which everything loveless that anyone threw at you is nullified and made board as long as you are willing to forgive them to recognize that beyond the mistake is a truer truth and that is the love that is the higher power now you know you don't have to do any of this obviously it's up to you but there's this part in the course of miracles where it says you can treat these ideas like toys and they'll have the effect of toys in your life or you can treat these ideas like the principles that rule universes and that's the effect that we'll have in your life so i invite you to miracle-mindedness because i'll tell you something you can look at the way the world is right now and it could be argued that from a merely rational perspective the gig is up already things are not good on a certain level and then on another level a truer level everything is possible but all that miraculous unlimited possibility cannot come onto the earth except through people god can there's a saying god cannot do for us what he cannot do through us so it's all on you and that's all i mean it's all on all of us not on other people each and every one of us so i would like you to join with me in the if even for an instant consideration of the possibility that there might be another way that change is possible that all of the mean suffering anxiety limitations that have affected your life that other people have thrown at you and that you've thrown it yourself and that you've thrown at other people you can stop now it can be nullified it can be made void and on the other side of that is a space of pure possibility where you can rise up and in some ways this is the story of the prodigal son that the father was more excited to see the son who left and came back than he was to see the son who never left we can be even stronger people for what we've been through we can be even better people for what we have been through it's just like somebody who's in you know aaa somebody who's somebody who has gotten sober can help the person just getting sober in a way that nobody else quite can i remember when i was talking about doing some work with veterans and i was told miss williamson thank you but we're really neat as people have seen combat there's something about what you've been through whatever you've been through even when you've gotten it wrong or even in places where you have been through a lot of horrible stuff you can help somebody else in a way that you would not have been able to help them if you had not been through that and even if you had not in some cases made that mistake you can say honey don't do that i did that it was really stupid don't do yourself what i did to myself and you never know whose life you might be saving so i don't want any of us to think of 2021 as oh god let's look at it and go 20 21 is gonna be quite a year that's okay because we're here and we know that there is nothing that god cannot do but he does it in us what happens on this earth happens because we make it happen human beings we're reaping a lot of what we've sown let us replant and so now we're going to go into a space i want you to take these things that you wrote down or these thoughts that you had and we're going to go into a negative connective meditative space within ourself and we're going to surrender all the things that we don't want to the god of our understanding the transformative power whatever words you use and we are going to dwell together in a space of unlimited possibility and we're going to have an experience of feeling our own expansion into what one part of us might think is impossible but what another part of us feels is our destiny so let's take a deep breath close our eyes we see in the middle of our mind a little ball of golden light we watch this light as it begins to grow larger and larger until now it covers the entire inner vision of our mind and we see for ourselves within this light a beautiful temple we see a garden that surrounds the temple and a body of water that flows through the garden see that the inside of the temple is lit by this same beautiful golden light and here we are for we have been drawn together and joined by the spirit of the god of our understanding by whatever name we call it and we now take all that we do not want all that we are willing to surrender our character defects all woundedness all lovelessness all of those places where we are harsh when we are mean where we are selfish where we judge our judgmental where we attack where we defend where we feel victimized where we feel limited where we blame whole groups of people where we give other people more power than they need to be given the conditions in our lives that we use as excuses our fear our fear of all things our fear of disease our fear of death our fear of abandonment our fear of neglect our fear of loss our fear of poverty all those things which shackle us and we place them in the hands of god and now we see with our inner eye a golden light that extends into infinity a golden light that pours forth upon us and a golden light that pours into our various cells of our body we take this moment to pray for those who are unjustly treated those who are unjustly imprisoned we pray for those who are ill we pray for those who are sick we pray for those who are grieving we pray for those who suffer tonight we pray for those who are fearful we pray for those who are hungry and yes we even pray for those we do not like and yes we pray for donald trump we do we snatch all hatred out of our hearts it does not serve we either bless the world but we do not we either pray for the world or we do not and in this moment we pray for all all of god's creatures and having done so we now send our love and our best wishes and our good will and our support and our encouragement and our appreciation and our empowerment to each other and we think of those that we love and we think of those that annoy us we pour forth our love on all of them we pour forth our love on those who we do not like and thus having expanded beyond the limits to our own compassion we now feel ourselves expand beyond the confines of our own bodies to a space of unlimited possibility unlimited strength unlimited love unlimited intelligence unlimited opportunity unlimited capacity unlimited good unlimited peace unlimited joy we see relationships circumstances opportunities abound as love now enfolds us and flows through us to bless the entire world we pray for the end to the covet pandemic but we know dear god that we need to learn the lesson we are open we are prepared we are ready we are available teach us show us that we might treat the world with greater reverence the people of the world with greater reverence the animals of the world with greater reverence the earth itself with greater reverence and ourselves with greater reverence our children with greater reverence future generations with greater reverence former generations with greater respect realign our energies make us who you would have us be that we might do as you would have us do that the world itself might thus be healed let us forgive everyone let us forgive everything knowing that behind all error lay unlimited love release others from the idea that they hurt you that you might no longer be hurt let your wounds be sacred wounds that you might emerge victorious triumphant and at peace at last we surrender all that we have and all that we are that as we place this year in the hands of god praying for those who grieve and suffer we do commit and devote ourselves that next year to whatever extent possible we ourselves might be conduits for helping to heal them all and so it is together we say amen as you as we close and then as you move away from this i hope you will take some time in silence if you can to really allow yourself to integrate whatever ideas were meaningful for you here that those ideas might take seed within you that you might feel the sprouts of new life remember the line from the talmud that there is an angel bent over every blade of grass whispering grow grow grow that there is a force which leads us to further growth we all know the line that the ark of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice how quickly it bends is up to us and that there's another ancient jewish teaching you are not expected to complete the task you are not obligated to complete the task but neither are you permitted to abandon it we have a task to repair the world and let us hold in our consciousness through the grace of god we will god bless you thank you for being with me tonight and i wish for you what i wish for myself all of the miracles that make all things right god bless you take care

Channel: Marianne Williamson

Views: 66,324

Rating: 4.8665748 out of 5

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

Id: 6AJ2YK-l1lY

Length: 47min 28sec (2848 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 01 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/TheSelfGoverned]

Bravo!

But what if one person can save the world? Jesus did.