Return to Love

by Marianne Williamson

Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we have learned here. The spiritual journey is the relinquishment—or unlearning—of fear and the acceptance of love back into our hearts. Love is the essential existential fact. It is our ultimate reality and our purpose on earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life.

Our fear is free-floating. We’re afraid this isn’t the right relationship or we’re afraid it is. We’re afraid they won’t like us or we’re afraid they will. We’re afraid of failure or we’re afraid of success. We’re afraid of dying young or we’re afraid of growing old. We’re more afraid of life than we are of death.

My painful thoughts were my demons. Demons are insidious. Through various therapeutic techniques, I’d become very smart about my own neuroses, but that didn’t necessarily exorcise them. The garbage didn’t go away; it just became more sophisticated.

Nervous breakdowns can be highly underrated methods of spiritual transformation.

There’s a biblical story where Jesus says we can build our house on sand or we can build it on rock. Our house is our emotional stability. When it is built on sand, then the winds and rain can tear it down. One disappointing phone call and we crumble; one storm and the house falls down.

When our house is built on rock, then it is sturdy and strong and the storms can’t destroy it. We are not so vulnerable to life’s passing dramas. Our stability rests on something more enduring than the current weather, something permanent and strong. We’re depending on God. I had never realized that depending on God meant depending on love. I had heard it said that God was love, but it had never kicked in for me exactly what that meant.

Thought is Cause; experience is Effect. If you don’t like the effects in your life, you have to change the nature of your thinking.