Marianne Williamson on Finding Peace with Lewis Howes

welcome everyone to the school of greatness podcast very excited about our guest her name is marianne williamson and she's got a new book called tears to triumph marianne thank you for coming on the show thank you appreciate it thank you i appreciate it i'm excited we were talking before that two years ago you were running for congress here in california and i uh you spoke about a thousand times in like three months and i i was fortunate enough to introduce you for like three minutes at one of your events and thank you had a great moment connecting with you even though you were you know all over the place but um that was a cool experience for you right exhilarating exhilarating and brutal why brutal running for office is really something right it's an experience like no other okay what was the biggest lesson you learned from that i thought it was legitimate for me to run because i thought that my understanding of the issues and my understanding of government was such that i could hit the ground running from day one as a congress person i felt that then i feel that now but what i vastly underestimated was the significance of the fact that i didn't know anything about running a political campaign i thought well you raise money and then you hire somebody who knows how to do that and that's simply not the case really what is the case it's not like a book launch huh well interesting you say that if i treated it like one i would have done better wow it's just a retail operation like any other really wow but i didn't know enough to know that i could just trust my own gut although when you think about it why not go around the district and just talk to people but you buy into this well people who do politics no i didn't know enough to know what to say no no no too so so that was very unfortunate and so you've got a new book out called tears of triumph the spiritual the spiritual journey from suffering to enlightenment and i want to make sure everyone goes and picks this copy up uh picks a copy up today and did this come from was this an idea before you were running for congress or just come afterwards no it's interesting that you asked that because i'll take the water away placement for you about three days after my uh campaign i was being interviewed by maria shriver and she asked me if i was sad at having lost and i told her no and she said really not sad and i said no you know you don't go into a political campaign guaranteed you're going to win right there's how many people are running against you right absolutely somebody's going to win somebody's going to lose that's you understand that she said you sure you're not just a little sad i said no it's sadness no she said because i have a cousin who ran for congress and he lost and he was really depressed for a long time you're not sad and i said about two days later i was sitting in my apartment and i remember the moment it happened i i i it's as though i saw a black huge black wave coming towards me i knew what it was i knew it was unavoidable um somebody told me that buffalo is when there's a storm buffaloes run into it they know they can't unrun it they can't outrun it they run into it i knew in that moment this was not something i could run away from and i'd had one other time in my life that i talk about in the book when i was deeply depressed and so i you know it's like hello darkness my old friend i've come to talk to you again i knew what this was but that was combined with the fact that simon garfunkel great so when i went into this experience which lasted a year after after not winning right i had tools with which to go through this experience not only having gone through it before but but also well what i had learned from having gone through it before and that's why i tell the story in the book is how much i learned and how much i had grown in some really profound ways from having gone through a dark night of my soul but i also have seen in the last few years that we have medicalized human despair there is a normal spectrum of human suffering people die as you get older there's more and more probability parents die friends die and so forth we have heartbreaks you go through a bit of divorce a heartbreak who hasn't financial failure you go bankrupt your business fails i mean we've all had disappointing situations in life but we have over the last few years allowed this pharmaceutical pharmacological industrial complex to impose this medical model on normal human despair i'm not talking about schizophrenia and serious bipolar where there's obviously a legitimate conversation about the use of psychotherapeutic drugs i'm talking about this phenomenon people talk about an epidemic of depression in america what there is is an epidemic of over medication particularly over prescription of antidepressants now for the fda itself which is hardly known for over-regulating has warned that for people 25 years old and younger antidepressants actually increase not decrease suicidal ideation we're giving andy to people are giving anti-anxiety and antidepressant drugs like their candy to young people abilify which is one of the single largest selling prescription drugs in america is an anti-psychotic drug a woman was telling me the other day they're giving abilify to her 16 year old so this is particularly disturbing to me for young people i i tell a story in the book about a woman who came to me a woman in her young 20s beautiful woman and she was telling me that she'd been diagnosed with a with a depressive disorder she'd been diagnosed with an anxiety disorder all these diagnoses you know everybody's got all these letters after their names today and it's not ph dnma anymore so i have worked a lot with people in life challenging situations i was very active during the age crisis as i said i've been through my own times of you know pain and i kept asking her questions because when she told me of all these diagnoses and all these prescription drugs she was on and she'd been told to expect to be on these for the rest of her life that's another one you hear a lot this is what happens when you have a market-based uh a medical system healthcare system right whereas in a in a country let's say like england where it's not market-based trying to get you off of it they try to get you off of them they'll say take it for just a little while hello and these things are addictive for a reason blah blah blah so i kept asking her questions because there must be something that i haven't heard her say yet that would possibly explain why the girl has been told that she's the victim that's such a victim mentality you have a disease you have a disorder right it's not your fault you don't have responsibility right and there's nothing for you to do to work through this except for take this medication and i i know and there wasn't i mean she didn't certainly didn't sound like she had a wonderful childhood but there was no there was no story of serious abuse serious trauma that could come anywhere near and then i realized how many times i've met this young girl over and over in various people she's in her early 20s the 20s are hard anybody that's been through their 20s can tell you their heart but they're not a mental illness exactly with pathologized adolescents it's hard it's not a mental illness going through a rough divorce it's hard not a mental illness the death of a loved one it's hard but it's not a mental illness and you infantilize yourself you stunt your own psychological development when you don't use these experiences to learn the things that we have to learn in order to live our lives in a way that we don't make that mistake again i went through a breakup where for the first three or four months all i could could see was his stuff and i could get plenty of people to agree with me and we all have the fancy jargon and addictive and avoidant and narcissistic and schizo i mean that we all like have to the verb is down and you can get all these people who agree with you about them and blah blah after about the third or fourth month i just began to in just the littlest way begin to see well i guess maybe i had something to do with it right like that jimmy buffett song you know hell it was my own time fought and a fault in margaritaville now that was painful so for the first pain was painful to see if only i had been different if where i wasn't forgiving where i wasn't um where i took him for granted where i wasn't responsible i wasn't exactly now if i didn't go through that pain how would i have learned what i needed to learn so that the next time out i would be more grateful for love and more understanding and so forth that's a lot of the pain when we go through these periods if you see it just as a disease it's a dark night of the soul which is if you see it only in a context of a of a medical model rather than of a growth model a sacred context where this is how you get to self-actualization this is how you learn you learn from your failures as well as your successes and also everybody says we want to take the edge off where would we be today if the abolitionists have been able to take the edge off right right where would we be if the abolitionist had not gotten upset or would be if people had said to susan b anthony you know wherever you go you create so much drama you know just just learn to chill and so everybody's so many people these days are on this artificial chill and it's not a real chill you know people talk about a spiritual bypass well there's a pharmaceutical bypass and i do want to say here that for anybody who might be listening to this who's rethinking their their antidepressant use no one should ever ever get off them except under very you know clear medical supervision you don't just throw them in the trash but i do think that this is is a phenomenon that is very dysfunctional i think that one of the chapters in the book is called the culture of depression we live in a very depressing world today if you're if you're why is that well why is it well could we begin if we don't heal the environment and radically change our behavior towards the environment the whole ecosystem could implode uh within 20 years um isil is clearly out of control right and it's affecting all major cities and anything clearly now could happen anywhere police brutality criminal justice prison industrial complex income inequality i mean if you're not depressed at looking at some of this i think you're not looking but if you're not rejoicing in the possibilities for greatness that you talk about if we're not rejoicing in the possibilities for transformation then you're spiritually and psychologically uninformed but what's going to motivate you to make the changes in your own life and what's going to motivate you to make the changes in in the world around you except feeling this is not working and in pain psychic pain conveys a message just like physical pain does you can't just numb the pain you have to reset the bone if it's a broken leg you have to reset the thinking if it's thinking that's leading to it and and psychic pain the psyche has an immune system just like the body does but you have to work with it and so you know it's like the canaries all these depressed people it's canaries in the coal mine and the owner of the mine is saying there's something wrong with the canaries right there's nothing wrong with the canaries and this is i think particularly an issue when i see so many women like on this pharmaceutical okay because our sensitivity and our not okayness is is part of our strength we're part of the internal warning system i think of the human race the the exquisite sensitivity of women who get upset when things aren't right that's not because we're flawed right thank you all right interesting um so what is the difference between suffering and pain then well that's funny that you say that the course in miracles says words aren't best but symbols so you know i know that there's a conversation about the difference between suffering and pain but and and i know where some people go with that the idea that what do they say pain happens suffering is inevitable or the other way around i do think that there is nietzsche said to live is to suffer to find meaning to survive is to find meaning in the suffering and what i i you know it we have learned a a model in terms of medicine and healing where we understand you can't just trash your body then experience the almost inevitable sickness and then just try to allopathically eradicate or suppress the symptoms you have to proactively cultivate health health is not the absence of sickness sickness is the absence of health we have to now apply that same model to our psychological and emotional state we can't just fight depression we have to proactively cultivate happiness happiness is not the absence of depression depression is the absence of happiness and the reason we're not happy is because we're not thinking happy thoughts so some people say to me oh marian you can't just think happy thoughts they might not realize what i mean by happy thoughts you can't think of yourself as a victim and be happy you can't withhold forgiveness and be happy you can't fail to take responsibility for your own circumstances and be happy you can't fail to atone for your mistakes and make amends for them and try to be a better person and be happy you can't disengage from the suffering of other human beings or other sentient beings not address them and be happy so there is a way in which our entire construct as a society is a set up for despair and i talk about buddha and moses and jesus and this sort of spiritual transmissions all of it all the great religious systems all the great spiritual and religious systems have at their core the issue of human suffering buddha said life is suffering and his realization of that was the beginning of his journey to enlightenment god sent moses to rescue these suffering israelites who were slaves in egypt jesus suffered on the cross suffering is what happens when you are living within the vortex of the ego mind the the racial consciousness of the human race that repudiates love you can't be happy here and then the journey whether it's symbolized by the 40 years of the israelites in the desert or the hours on the cross and the three days between the crucifixion the resurrection is those painful times where we are experiencing the suffering but learning the lessons so that we are then through the grace of god on the way to enlightenment promised land nirvana resurrection so you're saying the only way to experience growth is through pain or suffering or experience i don't think that the course in miracles says uh it is not up to you what you learn it's only up to you whether you learn through joy or through pain and in in your own work you you know that we we but we need to develop the mental musculature that cultivates happiness i don't think we have to learn to pain i think most of us have right a lot of our lives i know in my life i don't want to learn through pain as much as i did and that's why i have wanted to learn the lessons of painful situations so that next time i do that i won't create suffering for myself and others yeah what was the big pain that you felt for that year after i guess not being in congress well it's a very public failure when you run for office you went all in i mean you were promoting everywhere i mean right everyone was behind you everyone's behind me that means thank you very much giving money i saw it all thank you so so even though you know that people don't necessarily give money to a campaign um expecting you to win i was so aware that people showed up i was aware i lost other people's money i lost my own money um we could have made it if i know more what i was doing i had a lot of people like to forgive i had to forgive myself so just little things like that right yeah and um there was something else you said before that i was gonna speak to about it forgot so why do you think that you weren't able to learn the lesson before then or you weren't able to learn through the joy of it why do you think you needed the experience well as i said before on that situation i i was simply i thought because it's funny i had been around a lot of people in congress i've been around the president at a certain point but i had never been since a very young age around a political campaign i didn't i didn't realize how important that was like i said i thought you could just just hire somebody to do that it's not so simple when i was younger though the story that i tell in the book is about a period of time that was very very difficult in my life and i felt and this is why i feel so strongly about our seeing our suffering within the context of spiritual growth i went through this very painful time that i talk about pretty much in the book when i was in my late 20s and i felt as though my skull exploded into thousands of pieces that sounds painful it was a very painful time in my life and i and over a period of about a year i felt that all those pieces of this this greek vase it felt like an ancient vase that it just shattered and my skull it just exploded and it felt like very very slowly it had come back together and when my skull came back together i felt that there was something in my head that had not been there before and my career started very shortly thereafter and i have read articles since then i'm fascinated by that i've read articles of people who've been through crises and traumas and comas and things and they come out i remember reading an article i'm pretty sure it was the actress deborah winger and i think that this is the i think this is correct i think it's that when she was a teenager or early 20s or something she was hit in the head by a horse i think it was and was in a coma and came out and said i'm going to be an actress and was never an actress so i came out of that experience and shortly thereafter moved to los angeles and started lecturing and i knew how to get on a stage and talk not only before you didn't know how to get on a stage and talk i knew how to talk but i didn't know how to say anything particularly meaningful sure i didn't know how to hold it together it just it just didn't it wasn't there yet it wasn't there yet and but even perhaps more importantly one of the things i talk about in the book is it's very important not to desensitize ourselves to our own suffering because if you desensitize yourself and numb yourself to your own pain you're more likely to desensitize yourself to the pain of others part of the value or the gift of suffering if you have to go through it which is not to romanticize it or glamorize it is that it gives you x-ray vision into the suffering of other people and when my career began it wasn't long after that the aids crisis burst onto the scene here and i was very involved because gay men in l.a really gave me my career they all started coming to my not they all but many started coming to my lectures sure because at that time western medicine didn't really have anything to offer until it did and i could be with the agony of others i could slide into that frequency in a way that i'm not sure i would have been able to because you experienced it because i had experienced it and i think that americans you know people talk about an empathy deficit that's too cold a way to put it if you even look at something like the invasion of iraq which in retrospect everybody gets was like oops right how did we as a nation so equal so easily acquiesce to a situation where even if he had had quote unquote weapons of mass destruction we do business with dictators who have weapons of mass destruction every single day you think the chinese haven't killed their own people i mean come on what are we talking about here we so easily acquiesce to a situation where fire was going to rain down from the sky on thousands and thousands of men women and children who had not done anything to us we where is the problem just that that happened or the problem that we we there was just a little bit of a whimper of protest compared to what there might have been and i think that's because we've all desensitized ourselves too much to to what pain feels like so do you think when we're going through an experience of pain or suffering or whatever going through depression that we should feel the feelings fully or how should we experience that time and how long should we be in that pain before we're like you know what enough is enough let's see get out of this crap start thinking positively very good point well once again there is that symbol of the 40 years in the desert the three days between the crucifixion and the resurrection and i saw this i've seen this in my life the congressional campaign was it was an example but other times and we all if you're honest would you really take a look at yourself this is the truth let's say you you know that i went through something painful and you say hey marianne i'm really sorry i heard about your divorce or heard about your bank whatever and i'm like thanks so much and you say you know let's go have a drink let's talk about it and you're really there for me but if six months later you see me again and i'm telling the story you're not going to be you're you're not going to naturally feel like oh let's go out and talk about it you're going to actually be a little repelled you can feel it in your gut that point and other people can feel it too that point where processing becomes milking it talking about it becomes spewing a victim for too long and other people can feel it too and when you're in that that holy tomb time as my friend would say people have a natural hey i'm sorry you know heard about that conscious people and when somebody's it's become their calling card their victim story now you're you're doing too much i know he hurt you but you're badmouthing him in public no that's not cool and that's how and also you know people talk about but at what point do you need medication because it's going on too long here we are everybody's talking about the wisdom of the body the genius of the body everybody's doing muscle testing because the body's so smart why don't we count tears as part of that if the body is so intelligent why are we assuming that it's not intelligent about how many tears you have to cry so if you have 44 when you say how long does it go on however long it has to go on if you're conscious if you're meditating if you're working on forgiveness if you're doing your spiritual work that's a chapter on forgiveness there's a chapter on relationships to do our work and then if you have 45 tears to cry 35 is not enough and if you and if you do a pharmaceutical bypass or whatever you do to self-medicate to to uh to numb yourself to distract yourself it's in there i mean even talking about the campaign i can talk about it i don't think i could talk about it if you know because the only way to clear it is to move through it in life and then there are lessons learned and hopefully ways that you can be a better person what do you think or how long of time is the longest time you've held on to not forgiving someone else or yourself for something that's happened in your life um the lawyer who threw me under the bus and cost me a lot of money um i had a hard time what was this uh around 15 years ago yeah how long were you holding on to that it was a hard one years we're talking months we're talking yes i was bitter a decade uh yeah did you finally forgive i f yeah but you see once you know spiritual principle spiritual principle certainly as it's articulated in something like the course in miracles says that you are 100 responsible for your experience you and i might both go through the same experience but how we contextualize it will determine its ultimate effect like i was saying one of my lectures the other night that i see more marriages break up not because of infidelity but because of the other person's inability to forgive the infidelity makes sense someone were talking about we had a great marriage for 25 years he went out he had an affair with a girl they did it around four or five times it's been two years he wants to remain in the marriage he's really sorry i can't forgive him 25 years yeah i mean so right and fortunately she got that and she saw that too forgiveness means that you are at choice what are you going to focus on are you going to focus on the person's mistake or are you going to focus on anything they ever did right now to the extent the way the mind operates to the extent to which i'm focused on what you did to me to that extent i will be at the emotionally at the effect of what you did to me only if i'm willing to take the hook out of you will i will the hook be out of me now in terms of that lawyer i wrote a book called um the law of divine compensation and that book is about the fact that whenever there's a diminishment on the material plane the universal substance will compensate it's like if there's a hole in the ocean it doesn't matter how big the hole it doesn't matter what the shape of the hole the universe or the ocean will fill it up so from a metaphysical perspective the course in miracle says god has the answer to every problem the moment the problem occurs so that money i had to earn that money so that lawyer by doing what he did um and i think it was many people go through this and i think a lot of women go through this you think the men in suits are the ones who are going to protect you and the men and to the ones like hello awakening to that is one of the not every not all of them but so um so from a course in miracles perspective if the money was mined if i had earned that money the universe it was already programmed into the universe for that money to come back but miracles can only occur where there is love so unforgiveness and withhold of forgiveness blocks the miracle deflects the miracle so the bitterness in my personality was blocking the probability for to come back afford to come back to go on with your life and more than that we'll come back to you you are letting him right you the only real abundance is love and so when you are in abundance of love all the abundance that matches the frequency of of your need and your ultimate desire for your good for yourself and all living things is already programmed so your unforgiveness and your bitterness as well as your own lack of atonement about your own mistakes blocks the flow of the universe that would otherwise bring you all good so what was happening in this however many years period of this lack of forgiveness for you were you being abundant or were other challenges coming up or did this well yes it was just one of you know many situations in my life but it just came up for me because you asked what was the longest that you ever you know once you know spiritual principle that doesn't mean you automatically become a uh an enlightened master and you never go to those places but when you go to them you know that you went to them and oh i know what it was it's interesting that you say that because i thought of something from before when i said i couldn't remember the buddha said that one of his four noble truths is that nothing in the material world can provide anything but temporary happiness so the entire social construct the things of the material world can provide only temporary happiness okay so when you apply that to our culture you see that the whole thing is a set up for despair because half the time we're struggling and grasping because our whole thing is you can make it you can make it happen figure out what would make you happy you can have that you can make that dream come true you can have that house you can have that career you can have that money you can have that sex you can have that relationship so half the time we're in struggle and grasping trying to make it happen because that's when we're going to be happy then you get there and as buddha said it's only temporary so inevitably the fairy dust will grab off the fairy dust is going to rub off the idol and then the rest of your time you're in despair over the fact that what you thought was going to make you happy didn't make you happy yeah that was my whole childhood essentially until i was like 25. yeah he's always striving for something achieving and being like why am i miserable now yeah well i saw that in my mind the other day well i i got a call that my uh book could be to new york times bestseller list i was very happy you're turning it number five on the new york times bestsellers so for about five minutes i was like right let's go have a drink no no no no yes exactly the ego mine is insatiable maybe it's just a spike maybe i'm just going to be on for one week and by the way who's one through four right why am i number one right and how they're gonna be yeah i've been number one before i didn't quite go there but i did go to what if i'm off next week and and i just saw that's the active that's the way the ego mind works it's insatiable it has no no it has no capacity for enough it has no capacity for i'm happy because i'm alive i'm happy because i can give love and i can receive love which is the only source of happiness so should we be ambitious then well okay does the embryo have to be ambitious to become a baby to see embryo have to say i will become a baby i will become a baby does an acorn have to say i can strategize becoming an oak tree does the bud have to say i know i can become a blossom if i work hard enough nature works through us all nature is intentional nature is intentional that your heartbeat it is intentional that your lungs breathe it is intentional that the blood blossom it is intentional and so when you are in your self-actualized state which is not trying to make it happen but allowing it to happen nature is ambitious through you because nature is intentional that all things rise to the highest level of creative possibility and our struggle mode tightens us you can feel it in your body puts you in a so how do you focus every single day on not being tight or struggling meditation is that a daily practice for you oh absolutely i'm of course a miracle student so i do the workbook of the course i also do transcendental meditation although i'm not daily with that like i am with the workbook of the course there are many different paths of meditation uh people doing yoga and meditation and prayer a serious spiritual path though because a serious spiritual path which is a path of relinquishing the thought system that dominates the world the thought system of fear and accepting instead a thought system based on love so like i'm not an enlightened master i'm not beyond going to those places but it's like the whole thing about the bestseller list i was able to laugh at myself mightily i was able to guff at myself once i saw myself going there and then you surrender it to god and say take this false ambition away from me and this craziness that's only here to hurt me what would you say are some non-negotiables for you every single day it sounds like meditation is one are there a few other things you're like i must do this every single day otherwise i'm gonna feel the effects of whatever it's non-negotiable like i must get a certain amount of sleep i must monitor myself and i must not make excuses for myself what excuses do you make or have well i had a right to be angry i had to write to you no you you did this to me yeah yeah i i um you know we have a right to feel our feelings you have a right of course you have a right to feel whatever you feel but maybe instead of saying i have a right to be angry i have a right i do i take that back i'm not saying that you don't have a right to be angry but i never have a right to express it as an attack on another human being that i think that you need to attack back yes gotcha we are too emotionally self-indulgent in our culture we have this feeling well if i feel it i have the right to say it if i feel it i have the right to do it and this is a is a form of self-sabotage you know your ego mind is your self-hatred masquerading is your self-love you know some of the most selfish self-sabotaging things we do these days we call self-care setting a boundary well there are healthy boundaries and there is self-care but a lot of times the ego mind will use that to justify what 20 years ago we just could have called selfish jerk behavior for example what do you mean well i need to tell you that what you just did absolutely did not work for me well that's not going to open your heart do you know what i might say um may i i have something i'd like to discuss is this a good time for you i mean there might be feedback there might be but there is an appropriate way to talk about it you know sometimes these days we say well i communicated i needed to communicate my truth but the word communication has the word commune inside it so if i didn't commune when i was communicating i actually didn't communicate because if it was if i talk to you in a way that felt like an attack to you rather than genuinely no you're gonna you're not gonna hear me you're defensive or regarded so there's a line in the course where it says it is your job to tell your brother he is right even when he is wrong that doesn't mean tell him he didn't do something foolish when he did but to affirm your basic value as a human being and if you feel that from me then within that space you know this is just plain non you know non-violent communication skill so when you say what's non-negotiable for me and i'm not you know i'm not an enlightened master i don't get it right all the time but what is what i think i am pretty good at is you know like they that that line tell the truth as soon as you know it i think i'm pretty good at telling myself the truth as soon as i know it like wow you really blew it just now that was really dumb um apologize send an email um try to monitor yourself you know the ego mom wants to monitor you or you how did you too never wants to monitor ourselves and are you pretty uh active um do you do yoga or some type of physical workout practice yeah yeah what's what is it yoga i do yoga and i have become uh less uh religious with my cardio recently and uh i have made a commitment uh that when i i go home this week i'm getting back to all that all right okay yeah i'm 63 years old what no and uh some stuff that's impressive thank you some of the stuff that's cosmetic when you're younger becomes like no you have to do this wow it's not even like just to look okay thank you stay here gotcha what are you most grateful for in your life recently my daughter yeah i have a fantastic daughter how was she all right yeah what are you most proud about with her she's happy she's contributive she's achieved she's well adjusted my only real regret in life is that i didn't have more kids yeah do you have children no kids no yeah it's nothing like it really everything else fails in comparison what's the biggest lesson you learned about your life from having her it's just how beautiful life is you know not everything else is i mean love is what matters you know everything else is like what are we talking about here you know we we have a society in which when i talk about this in the book people pay more attention to taking care of their car than taking care of their relationships you know we if you you could buy a bentley you could buy a rolls royce you but you're going to take it off the off the the law you're still going to have to put gas in it you're still gonna have to maintain it the fact that that's why it's high maintenance because it's a great car but we expect our relationships to just take care of themselves and not be such a problem i have to do so much no that's kind of the point in relationships as well as everything else you get what you put into it you know sometimes i'll say uh at my lectures i'll say i don't want anybody raise your hand or anything because i don't want to put you on a spot but if you're in love or if you're married did you pray for your partner's happiness this morning did you wake up this morning and before he or she left the house and said just want to remind you you are so [ __ ] fantastic and i so believe in you and you were so hot and you were so did you did you you know we always talk about how important it is that we build children's self-esteem at what age do we stop needing that and also we talk about how it's important to tell your children to say their prayers at what age does should we stop doing that right we're so clear that children you must build their self-esteem well you could use the help too and so could i yeah and it's a full-time you know monitoring your own life your own mind being vigilant on behalf of your own best self downloading the best version of yourself atoning for your own mistakes you know a lot of the pain that we feel when we um go through difficult times in our lives is you know i messed up and if only i had done it different etc you can't numb yourself or distract yourself from that pain in all the religious traditions spiritual traditions catholicism there's confession in judaism the holiest day of the year is yom kippur or day of atonement in alcoholics anonymous you have to take a fearless moral inventory you have to admit the exact nature of your wrongs you have to look at that i blew it i made a mistake and a tone a tone for that it's a spiritual it's not self-will it's you give this to god i did this i get it and i atone for that error it's like a cosmic reset button and then the only way you can get yourself respect back is if you do something that would make you respect yourself like i'm going to be different this time i'm not going to be that way next time i'm going to be a better person today and what i i if you if you really see as your life's purpose to actualize and be the best you can be and rise to the occasion in every situation including your relationships and to be really present you don't have time for all that other kaka and craziness and criticism and blame and victimization if you filled your house with light darkness can't come in and are you you're not married anymore right no no are you in a relationship now no but [Laughter] tougher question okay holy after the interview um who was the most influential person in your life growing up my father my father my father was a magical character although you know as life has gone on i think my mother i think i undervalued my mother in some way so i realize now that the answer is both my parents but my father was a magical charismatic person um like he took us to vietnam to show us what war was during the war wow yeah that's interesting yeah so the military industrial complex couldn't eat his children's brains wow that's interesting yeah what do you think was the biggest thing you learned from him to raise hell when you should raise hell tell truth to power fight the revolution he'd say and i i learned that the revolution of love is the most powerful revolution but i think i you know my father died 20 years ago i think i'm still trying to get his approval really yeah yeah yeah why do we do that try to get our parents approval because if we didn't get it um something is uh i think especially with girls and their fathers you know we all know this a girl and her father and a boy and his mother and all that stuff that has to happen or you're a little too hungry for it i always felt that i was i think like everybody else you know my my parental drama has been um reenacted in my relationship drama just like everybody else yada yada you know garden variety right but if daddy was magical but uh whatever another book okay what do you want um what do you tell your daughter or is there anything you haven't told your daughter that you really wanted to know i used to always joke with my daughter and say i'll tell you when you're 18. but by the time she was 18 i had so pretty much told her everything it's wonderful having an adult child because you can communicate a little differently oh she coaches me we coach each other wow you know i'm her mother but we've always had this kind of sisterly connection as well i think that goes back lifetimes but it's beautiful i was thinking about something today that happened in terms of business and i defer to her decision really does she work she's better at it no if she wanted to do that she definitely would have the job no she's a historian she lives in london and she wants to be a historian she is a historian she's got her masters in history she's going to get her another master's hopefully a phd she wants to be a history professor yeah like if you're in walking through europe right and you see a beautiful wall let's say you're in florence italy and i would say oh that wall is so beautiful my daughter would want to know when it was built who built it why they built it why a wall what were the what were the political historical circumstances going on at the time that they would need a wall right right yeah it's a whole different orientation interesting i like you um i want to ask you a few final questions this has been great by the way so thank you for sharing openly thank you um what's something you've always uh that no one's really ever asked you that you always wish they did um personally or on a podcast where everybody would be listening either it's a big difference either big difference um because the answer to that is nothing i want to share on a podcast okay well afterwards i don't know okay we'll skip that one um this is something i call this interesting i never heard of the the buddha's four truths before yeah you call it the blues the noble truth the noble truth never heard of this but i i started asking a question about six months ago called the three truths okay and this is what you get well i've been i've been asking every person what their three truths are okay so if uh if this was your you know many many years from now is your last day and all your books for whatever reason were erased from time right and um all the videos you put out there and lectures and everything was gone okay and you got a piece of paper you have to write down three truths the three things you know to be true about your experience in life that you would pass on to your daughter or humanity what would you say are those three truths only love is ultimately real everything else is temporary love is who we are because we are ideas in the mind of god that is our essence and it is changeless it is eternal nothing we can do nothing we think about ourselves nobody else's opinion changes the truth of who we essentially are and our purpose on this earth is to download that love and to express it to the best of our ability in every single moment of every single day and number four that's also true of everybody else okay there you go i like that um before i ask you the final question uh i want to make sure everyone goes and gets this book it's called tears to triumph make sure to pick it up right now we'll have it all linked up below in the show notes and also where do you hang out most online where do you spend your most time should we send people to your website anywhere on social media marianne.com and i also have a public facebook page and twitter and i do instagram but i mainly i hang out pretty much on my facebook page because i on my publish page yeah i don't do my personal personal page but publicly you're yourself yeah i absolutely am and i like talking about political things and i like talking about spiritual things um and it's how i feel i keep keep in touch with what's going on um like everybody else though i have realized the addictive nature of some of that and um so i think we're all oh i'm like everyone else getting the the dangers of too much social media yeah gotcha well if the people want to connect with you they should leave a comment on your facebook page yes absolutely or and also i do free live streams every wednesday night that are in new york yeah in new york city i'm with everyone tonight at the middle collegiate church on second avenue between sixth and seventh and the link is available and yeah and then the book which i hope you know i hope that anybody whose heart you know we even happy lives have sad days absolutely and we need to not be so afraid of sadness we've taken a cheap yellow smiley face and just poured it over everything and i think if you're going to play big like you talk about and you're going to play passionately in life and you're going to risk for love and you're going to risk for success in appropriate ways you're going to you're going to you know if you the only way you can try to control things so that you won't get hurt is if you live small yeah and so to know i can take the hits too and i'm going to learn from those and get better i think that conversation is something that i know has made all the difference for me and i hope that it will make a difference for other people and i think when we're striving to achieve or be you know play big in the world i think our ego is a little bit involved in some ways i mean it's hard to really go after something big and not have the confidence and have your ego in the way i think it's the opposite really because it also depends on how you use the word ego okay but if you describe it as a sense of your separate self it is it is the way to not succeed i've never had as big a success professionally as my first book where the word bestseller wasn't even in my i didn't even think about it really oh absolutely i just hoped it would sell enough that i wouldn't be embarrassed so and i've never lost weight trying to lose weight this whole thing of go make it happen is that set up for despair look at a mountain does nature not know how to create something beautiful look at a flower does nature not know how to create something beautiful why do we think that when you look at the genius of the body if my body knows how to breathe and my body knows how to to to my heart knows how to beat why would i not assume that my subconscious already knows how to rise to its highest and when i'm trying to make something happen i'm actually interfering you know the spiritual concept is god's plan works and yours doesn't so when i'm going out there and trying to make it happen i'm actually more often than not interfering with the natural flow because if i'm trying to make it happen that goes against my being fully open to the present for instance you go to a meeting today and this has become very common you're going to a business meeting you're going to a personal meeting and somebody says to you okay now what's our intention for this meeting sounds really good it is so sick and i'll tell you why if i go into a meeting with you and this would be true of my coming here today what's my intention for this it means that i am programming my subconscious to what try to manipulate you or exploit you in whatever way that i think would would make this the outcome that would be best for me first of all it is a complete it turns you into a transaction rather than a relationship it completely demystifies the universe it takes out any sense of sacred assignment it it mitigates against my being fully available to the experience so it really mitigates against my being fully available and then which is the only chance that anything really beautiful can happen right so what about the book the power of intention then dwyer write that book okay let's talk about intention buddha talks about right intention he talks about right intention and wrong intention when people talk today about how you got to have an intention and you got to go out and make it happen so did hitler right just having an intention nelson mandela but that was well that's why buddha talks about right intention and wrong intention so that the spiritual mountaintop is not having an intention and making it happen the the the high spiritual mountaintop is an intention that you serve love that you rise to the occasion and allow life to flow through you in the best way possible for all living things past present and future that's right intention evil geniuses have wrong intention just intention of itself do you see what i'm saying so metaphysics can be used for purposes of ego as well as spirit right you know and that's why that's the difference in the course in miracles between magic and miracles you know these days everybody's into magic trying to use universal principle to get what i want people are like using god as their errand boy you know miracles is where you place yourself in service and in devotion now this is some people think and christianity is what did this christianity as an organized religion cultivated the idea that you have to choose between serving god and being happy but when you look at the higher metaphysic it's the opposite god is love it's the only way to be happy god's not outside you god's inside you so when you say in any situation may god's will be done god is love will is thought so to say my god's will be done means may only loving thought prevail here may my my neuroses not get in the way may i only see the love in that person may they only see love in me how could it not unfold well right right otherwise you're just on that wheel the buddha called the wheel of suffering yeah why is it easier said than done then well it's easier said than done because the entire mindset of the human race is upside down from a spiritual perspective is based on fear rather than love and that's why everybody's depressed because the the world is constantly bombarding us with input that repudiates the essence of who we are i mean just look at that alone i can either say i'm here to love you and show up for this moment or gotta make this successful so that then maybe it's successful in my book right and so the course says my real happiness is going to come from being present here because if it's all that we've we've talked about it you get it got it that's great thank you um okay well final question before i ask it i want to take a moment to acknowledge you and i want to acknowledge you for showing up not perfect in the world because you're being so honest about it yeah i mean showing up being honest because you know there's so many people who you know and i feel this even a little bit now that are writing books or creating big things in the world that people assume that they're perfect that they always have the right answers they never make mistakes and so i appreciate your honesty and your realness to be a human being well thank you you know there is there are such things as enlightened masters uh there is the buddha there is the jesus there is the moses and when you have and and i do believe that that that paradigm and that sense of spiritual transmission and the vortex of that from the truly enlightened beings i respect that if i was an enlightened messenger i would know it i guess i'd tell you i'm very clear that i'm not so there's another paradigm and that is the teacher who is as the course in miracles calls it half a step ahead and sometimes by sharing oh let me tell you how i failed on that one is actually can almost be more helpful yeah that's true well i want to also acknowledge you for going for it and and going after your dreams of being in congress or whatever you're doing thank you and constantly pushing your own limits because even though you didn't achieve it you went for it and you played big and i saw and i was a witness and it was incredible thank you and uh it's a constant reminder that you know i'm i'm i go through things all the time that don't work out as i plan them to be but at least i go for them and i give fully and so to witness what you're doing it's it's really inspiring the only failure in life is something we didn't learn from and that's you know the course in miracles there's a line that says some of your greatest successes you thought were failures and some of your greatest failures you thought were success so i i had a career before i have a career now that's that was uh sure one thing exactly well i appreciate you and i want to ask the final question and that's what's your definition of greatness god love everything else is so small in comparison um marianne thanks for coming on thank you appreciate it thank you hey guys lewis howes here and thanks so much for checking out this video and this interview i hope you loved it if you did make sure to leave a comment below and share this with your friends also i've got a huge announcement the summit of greatness is coming very soon if you love the school of greatness podcast if you love these interviews and you want more you want to connect with some of these speakers in person you want to connect with me and other people just like you who watch and listen to these interviews then make sure to sign up for the summit of greatness go to summitofgreatness.com to learn more you can check out more about the video that we have that we created for the summit there's a link in the description below as well it's summit of greatness.com check it out right now i hope to see you there and again thanks so much for watching this video you

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 183,844

Keywords: LEWIS HOWES, THE SCHOOL OF GREATNESS, MARIANNE WILLAMSON, TEARS TO TRIUMPH, OPRAH, MOTIVATION, INSPIRATION, INTERVIEW 2016, marianne williamson return to love, marianne willamson a course in miracles, marianne willaimson 2016

Id: h-UNqNTORRs

Length: 54min 13sec (3253 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 29 2016