Return to Love

by Marianne Williamson

An outburst of emotion doesn’t have to be so quickly labeled anger. It’s a release of energy and doesn’t have to be thought of as a negative or “unspiritual” emotion.

Real relationships demand honest communication, and no matter how painful, no matter how frightening.

The ego is simply where a glitch occurred, where the wires got crossed, where love became blocked. As many times as I’ve expressed negativity instead of love in my life, there’s one thing I’m very sure of: I would have done better if I had known how. I would have expressed with love if I had felt at that moment that I could have, and still had my needs met.

The ego’s purpose is to make us continually self-destruct without knowing that we’re doing it. It’s hard enough cleaning up your own act. Trying to clean up someone else’s is just an ego trick to keep you from applying yourself to your own lessons. In order to learn the most from relationships, you have to focus on your own issues.

The price you pay for not taking responsibility for your own pain is the failure to realize that you can change your conditions by changing your thoughts. Regardless of who initiated a painful interaction, or how much of the error still lies in someone else’s thinking, the Holy Spirit always provides you with complete escape from pain through forgiveness on your part.

You awaken to your own perfection through your desire to see the perfection in someone else.

The enemy is this feeling, which in the past has led me to attack or defend enough to make him feel exactly what I’m feeling he’s feeling but he really isn’t. I can choose to see this differently.

We stop judging people and start relating to them instead. We recognize, first and foremost, that we’re not in a relationship to focus on how well the other person is learning their lessons, but rather to focus on learning our own.

Our ego has made up a fictional character that we now think of as our personality. But we are constantly creating that personality, and if we choose, we are constantly recreating it.

If I’m criticizing someone in order to change them, that’s my ego talking. If I’ve prayed and asked God to heal me of my judgment, however, and then I’m still led to communicate something, the style of my sharing will be one of love instead of fear. It won’t carry the energy of attack, but rather of support.

When we speak from the ego, we will call up the ego in others. When we speak from the Holy Spirit, we will call up their love. A brother who is in error, says the Course, calls for teaching, not attack.

When we do speak, the key to communication is not what we say, but rather the attitude that lies behind what we say.

We don’t seek joining through our words; we accept the thought that we are joined with the other person before we speak. That acceptance is itself a miracle.

We’re not to try to figure out what to say to a brother. It is merely our job to ask the Holy Spirit to purify our perceptions of the other person. From that place within, and only from that place, will we find the power of words and the power of silence, which bring the peace of God.

Commitment in a relationship means commitment to the process of mutual understanding and forgiveness—no matter how many conversations it takes, nor how uncomfortable those conversations might sometimes be.

Relationships are eternal. The “separation” is another chapter in the relationship. Often, letting go of the old form of the relationship becomes a lesson in pure love much deeper than any that would have been learned had the couple stayed together.

“I love you so much that I can release you to be where you need to be, to go where you need to go.”

Our needs are not separate. If we contribute to another person’s pain, it will always come back to haunt us. If we do what we can to help them, someone will always come around to do the same for us.

Resistance and defense only make the error more real, and increase our pain.

The Christ within us can handle any assault because it is not affected by lovelessness. Only our belief that we are affected by fear can make it affect us. Defense is a way of agreeing with the attacker in the power of his attack, and so making it real in our experience.

It takes great courage and personal strength to hold on to our center during times of great hurt. It takes wisdom to understand that our reactiveness only fans the flames of false drama.

An enlightened marriage is a commitment to participate in the process of mutual growth and forgiveness, sharing a common goal of service to God.

We are both safe to go through whatever emotion is called forth from deep within us—and whenever we are truthful, there are times when we are upset—but it is safe to do that here. No one is leaving.

Healing occurs in the present, not the past. We are not held back by the love we didn’t receive in the past, but by the love we’re not extending in the present.

there is nothing we have been through, or seen, or done, that cannot be used to make our lives more valuable now. We can grow from any experience, and we can transcend any experience.

We can work on ourselves every moment that we live. The world is healed one loving thought at a time.

Success means we go to sleep at night knowing that our talents and abilities were used in a way that served others.

If we talk to anyone, or see anyone, or even think of anyone, then we have the opportunity to bring more love into the universe.

It isn’t guarding against our making fools of ourselves; it is guarding against our experience of who we really are, the brilliance of expressing it, and the joy that the expression brings to ourselves and others.

we’re just like everybody else. Knowing this—that we’re no better or worse than anyone else because we’re all essentially the same—is a thought lacking in luster only until we fully appreciate what kind of club we belong to.

We’re tempted to think that we’re more impressive when we put on airs. We’re not, of course; we’re rather pathetic when we do that.

The reason so many of us are obsessed with becoming stars is because we’re not yet starring in our own lives.

When we’re working solely for money, our motivation is getting rather than giving.

What we mentally refuse to permit others, we refuse ourselves. What we bless in others, we draw to us.

If we begrudge someone else the right to make a living, we are begrudging ourselves the same. What we give, we will receive, and what we withhold will be withheld from us.

Miracles mean that at any moment we can begin again. No matter what the problem, as long as we return our minds to a graceful position now, the universe will always help us clean up the mess and start over. To repent means to think again. In every area, the universe will support us to the extent that we support it.

The reason many people want to be actors is not because they are truly called to the art, but rather because they want so desperately to create something beautiful in their own lives. Show up! Be enthusiastic! Put some energy into the life you’re living now! How will anyone ever be impressed by your starlike quality if you’re waiting to cultivate that quality until you become a star?

It is our humility, our desire to be of service, that makes us stars. Not our arrogance.

We’re not ashamed to admit we’re still in process. The ego emphasizes the goal rather than the process by which we achieve it.

it is not our credentials but our commitment to a higher purpose that creates our effectiveness in the world. Our resumes are important only if we think they are.

The miracle worker’s goal in every circumstance is peace of mind. A Course in Miracles tells us that ‘we don’t know what would make us happy; we just think we do.’

The miracle-minded perception would be to make happiness itself our goal and to relinquish the thought that we know what that would look like.

But a miracle worker makes peace our only goal. What that does is to direct the mind to focus on all the factors that contribute to our peace, and leave everything else out of our conscious consideration. The mind, like the physical eye, is inundated with so many impressions at one time, that a built-in censor mechanism brings focus to our perception. It chooses what we’ll notice and what we won’t.

Making our goal anything other than peace is emotionally self-destructive. If our goal is to get the job, then that’s fine if we do, but if we don’t get the job, we’ll feel depressed. If we make peace our goal, then if we get the job, that’s great, but if we don’t, we’re still peaceful.

Our emotions flow from our thoughts, and not the other way around.

I have heard it said that living out of our vision is more powerful than living out of our circumstance. Holding on to a vision invokes the circumstances by which the vision is achieved.

“Dear God, I surrender this situation to you. May it be used for your purposes. I ask only that my heart be open to give love and to receive love. May all the results unfold according to your will. Amen.” Whatever you do, do it for God.

We are strong enough to do any job He asks us to do. Don’t be concerned about your own readiness, says the Course, but be consistently aware of His. It is not you doing the work, but the spirit who is within you. Forgetting this causes fear.

Miracles shift us from a sales to a service mentality. Since in the realm of consciousness we only get to keep what we give away, a service mentality is a far more abundant attitude.”

There is no more powerful motivation than to feel we’re being used in the creation of a world where love has healed all wounds.